By Amanda Painter

I was thinking recently about how, each year, the Sun moves from its alignment with the Galactic Core in late Sagittarius (today) to its ingress of Capricorn (Saturday) within the span of a couple of days. I’m fascinated by this juxtaposition of energies, and what it might mean.

Even though our Milky Way galaxy and its center are far from the most massive things in space, they’re still too huge and too far away for most of us to comprehend.

How do you relate something like that to your job or your breakfast, or your life’s goals, or even how long it takes you to fly on a plane from one continent to another? You can’t. And yet we’re part of the Milky Way.

We — our bodies, our personal interconnections, our planet, our solar system — are all moving through space around the Galactic Core. In some way, the physics that governs the movement of the galaxy is the same physics that governs our movements here on Earth.

Astrology isn’t about physics, though it depends in part upon it. Astrology is an interpretive art, a process of seeing symbols and making stories through which we can gain understanding and grow. And as you may have read before, the GC is often interpreted as ‘our cosmic homing signal’: a beacon calling to our spirits, as we’re having a physical experience.

Much has been written about how the GC is one of the deep-space features seemingly lending the sign Sagittarius its quirkier qualities, its broad vision and need for freedom, its perception of spiritual and philosophical truths. Eric has mentioned many times the often-fleeting nature of insights that can come through during a GC-aligned event: a sense of ‘getting it’ on a grand scale, and the need to write down what you’ve perceived before it gets lost again in the minutiae of daily life.

So here we have the Sun (symbol of conscious awareness and self-expression) aligning with the Galactic Core, opening to something massive, unknown, and not directly knowable. Yet suddenly your consciousness is in a position to embody and express it.

Then, two days later, the Sun enters Capricorn: the sign of very earthy and Earthly limits, and the things we construct within them; the sign of business and government — entities created entirely by human beings for the purpose of organizing other human beings. Capricorn is a sign of family and history: things that can be known by us, though we often choose to remain ignorant of what they can teach us.

For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, we get a palpable, visual experience of the shift from Sagittarius to Capricorn. All during the Sun’s journey through Sadge, the days have been getting shorter and the nights longer: something that, without all our electric and digital and cultural interventions, would nudge us to notice both the vast night sky and the questions that lie within us.

The Capricorn solstice is both the culmination of that day-night imbalance and, potentially, of our turning-inward. Where I live, the weather has yet to hit winter’s peak; for many people, the instinct to hunker down increases the deeper we get into Capricorn, despite the days getting imperceptibly longer.

As a result, I notice people using Capricorn’s ability to take initiative (it’s a cardinal sign, like Aries, Cancer and Libra) in ways that are often less externally oriented, compared to the warmer beginnings of other seasons. Coinciding as it does with the turn of the civil calendar, people often use the solstice and all of Capricorn to review their year’s progress, and to set intentions for the year ahead. I recently read somebody likening this to the kinds of year-end reviews companies do — fitting, as Capricorn’s the sign of corporations and designated leadership.

With all of this in mind, I’ve been wondering more about the ways we do and do not allow the mysteries and inner messages of Sagittarius and the Galactic Core to infuse and guide the steps we plan and take during solar Capricorn. It hardly seems ‘just a coincidence’ that these two adjoining signs function as they do. What would happen if you stayed more consciously oriented on our ‘cosmic homing signal’ as you step into the responsibilities that Capricorn (and its ruler, Saturn) implies? Or do you feel like you already do so naturally?

I was reading this interview with Joanna Macy before writing this, in between bits of breaking news. So much of what we’re witnessing being done to this planet and all its life forms, by governments across the globe, is desperately depressing — as is our collective inertia and overwhelm in addressing it all. And yet, consider Macy’s perspective on it:

Yes, it looks bleak. But you are still alive now. You are alive with all the others, in this present moment. And because the truth is speaking in the work, it unlocks the heart. And there’s such a feeling and experience of adventure. It’s like a trumpet call to a great adventure. In all great adventures there comes a time when the little band of heroes feels totally outnumbered and bleak, like Frodo in Lord of the Rings or Pilgrim in Pilgrim’s Progress. You learn to say, “It looks bleak. Big deal, it looks bleak.”

Our little minds think it must be over, but the very fact that we are seeing it is enlivening. And we know we can’t possibly see the whole thing, because we are just one part of a vast interdependent whole — one cell in a larger body. So we don’t take our own perceptions as the ultimate.

Macy is speaking specifically about our unfolding climate disaster. She is not unaware of the tremendous amount of work that needs to be done, both in terms of on-the-ground changes in policy and individual environmental behavior, and in terms of personal, heart-opening spiritual work. Yet her perspective is that our presence now offers the chance to be enlivened by this work and its call to purpose.

She also comments on the need for connection with other people in the process:

I find myself very buoyed by the work I do. I call it the work that re-connects. It involves speaking the truth about what we are facing. I think it’s very hard for people to do that alone, so this work thrives and requires groups.

It needs to be done in groups so we can hear it from each other. Then you realize that it gives a lie to the isolation we have been conditioned to experience in recent centuries, and especially by this hyper-individualist consumer society. People can graduate from their sense of isolation, into a realization of their inter-existence with all.

I bring this up for a couple of reasons. One is that, on top of our digitally induced isolation, the colder weather of the Northern Hemisphere also fosters isolation. It takes more effort to leave the house; sometimes it is downright dangerous to do so.

Yet, the day before the solstice, Venus leaves Capricorn and enters Aquarius. Venus thereby becomes the first of the current Capricorn cluster to leave the sign, doing so at 1:41 am EST on Friday.

Venus moves immediately into a square with Uranus in Taurus (a case of what’s called “mutual reception,” when two planetary rulers occupy each other’s signs and can seem to act like each other). On one level, this aspect suggests that seeking new experiences in your existing relationships (romantic or platonic, or in groups) will help redirect any energy that’s currently too bound up in habits and routines.

Aquarius is a rather cool and detached place for Venus, the planet of emotions and bodily senses, to hang out. Yet this lack of intense attachment can facilitate more functional group dynamics and friendships. (As Eric notes, just don’t let yourself get too chilly; stay in contact with your desires and your body’s responses, and what they have to tell you.)

Venus is leaving the traditional family home of Capricorn, with all those relations, both close and distant, crowded together for the holidays. She’s stepping into a new group — one where doing new things differently feels more possible. If she felt isolated while in Capricorn (whether from the softness and empathy of others, or from her own heart’s joy), what might it mean to step into the realm — and possibly even the role — of Uranus the Awakener?

Who is out there for you to connect with, awaken with, work with, share truth with? As Macy states, and as what we know of our universe shows, you are one cell in an interconnected whole — just as the individual cells within your body interconnect to form the whole of you. Your breath keeps processes in motion that sustain those cells. What breath enlivens and sustains the cosmos, and therefore you?