By Amanda Painter

We’re one week and one day away from the Capricorn solstice. Here in my corner of the Northern Hemisphere, the urge to hunker down and cozy up is strong, despite all the holiday insistence. As my college photography teacher said recently, “This time of year, it’s 3:00 pm all day” — referring to the quality of the light, as the Sun never gets very high in the sky here, and only shines for a short time. It makes the day feel late, not long after it begins.

Mill Pond, Casco, Maine; photo by Amanda Painter.

This year, the fact of finally being on the other side of a year of inner-planet retrogrades seems to be adding to the paradoxical urgency brought by the holidays in this time of slowing down and moving inward. As in, suddenly there are opportunities for forward movement and outward development that seemed to be in hiding much of the year (speaking for myself personally, at least).

Yet, true to the season, many of those opportunities are still in potential. Looking ahead to the months when they might actually culminate — aiming toward the vision, the goal, the horizon — resonates with the tone of Sagittarius, where the Sun is. But so much of that is mental: the Gemini side of that zodiac axis. And there’s only so much one can do in one’s mind before setting events into physical motion must follow, before intention and action must be integrated.

Reflecting a fairly quiet week astrologically, the central aspect heading into the weekend is the first quarter Moon. This is the Sun in late Sagittarius receiving a square from the Moon in late Pisces, exact at 6:49 am EST (11:49:08 UTC) on Saturday.

Squares tend to reflect tension and a need to integrate two sides of something by taking action of some kind. Perhaps fittingly, this particular first quarter Moon involves two of the signs most related to formulating a broad vision of something, and related to the concept of ‘spirituality’.

With the Sun trine the dwarf planet Eris in Aries, and the Moon sliding between Mars and Chiron during this lunar quarter, we get a little more fine-tuning of the themes. Are you setting your sights on goals that reflect who you are in the process of becoming, without ignoring or abandoning the facets of who you’ve been? Are you feeling motivated to acknowledge, and move forward with, all that Chiron has brought to your awareness while in Pisces?

Perhaps, however, what struck me most about this first quarter Moon are the Sabian symbols for the Sun and Moon. The Sabians are a set of channeled symbols for each of the 360 degrees of the zodiac, perhaps the most widely known version being the one interpreted by Dane Rudhyar.

The symbol for the Sun at 24 Sagittarius is: “A bluebird perched on the gate of a cottage.” It comes with the keynote, “The reward which meets every effort at integration into a social environment for those who remain true to their own selves.”

The Moon at 24 Pisces gets this symbol: “On a small island surrounded by the vast expanse of the sea, people are seen living in close interaction.” It carries the keynote, “The need to consciously accept one’s own personal limitations in order to concentrate one’s energies and to live a centered and fulfilled life.”

The effort of integration with others while staying true to oneself (all of oneself); accepting limitations, concentrating energies, and yet living in close interaction with others; looking to horizons both inner and outer as the Sun nears a seasonal turning point: how is all of this playing out for you?

Whether you’re in a part of the world experiencing “3:00 pm all day,” or you have round-the-clock nighttime, or you’re getting mostly daytime — or fairly equal parts day and night — the astrology is the same. As is the question of how to be a source of light yourself, in the face of all that is casting shadows in society. What must you act upon and integrate rather than ignore?

As we go deeper into this most unusual and challenging phase of history, intelligence is the thing we need the most. That is the theme of the 2019-2020 annual edition of Planet Waves, now available for pre-order. See more information here.