The Moon is New (if delulu) in Sagittarius
Dispatches from the frozen banks of Mark Creek, as Neptune's fog machine stations direct and Mercury gets drunk on mead.
A New Moon in Sagittarius perfects this evening, illuminating the third decan of the archer. Most ancient texts see Saturn as presiding over this place, which feels apt: the Sun makes its solemn procession toward the solstice in the final degrees of Sagittarius. The year is old in its bones. Two golden vitamin D pills, hand-fed by my boyfriend, is my girl dinner (breakfast). In the darkest part of winter, it can feel like the scope of our lives shrink to a pin-prick hole. The flames of our spirit require more fastidious tending.
And there’s something wiley about this New Moon too. I’m not entirely sure I trust it. Mercury stations retrograde the same day, the planet of facts already answering to a slippery Saturn in Pisces. The coming lunation, which heralds the solstice, is also applying to a square of our time-line bender, Neptune. The planet of illusion and boundlessness (whether of the unexplored ocean depths or deep space) stationed direct just a few days ago. If you’re feeling lost in the sauce, disillusioned, disenchanted — know that this too will pass. Though Neptune’s fog horns feel ceaseless, this lunation also answers to Jupiter in Taurus: our unapologetic sensualist.
If, like me, your dreams have all but calcified under this murky Saturn-Neptune co-presence, tether yourself to small things. For me it’s been peeling the paper off the morning panettone, an extra ten minutes in corpse pose, or the delight of seeing cat and deer hoof prints wending their trails together by Mark Creek.
And within Saturn’s shrinking walls, the enchantment of small things sharpens. Hanging candles in a window generously hold a year’s regrets in their penumbra (the book I thought I’d start to write this year — and didn’t). As I type this, M is bent over the dining room table, measuring cardboard strips with a compass to make his ancestral julekurver, the woven heart-baskets from Norway. Snowflakes themselves, in their mysterious, Eschered fractals, have always felt like trimmings fluking from the ordered firmament above. The god-cut, cooling, puzzle pieces of distant stars.
These last degrees of Sagittarius have a way of packing the far flung mysteries of the cosmos into the miniature. In the darkest part of winter, we praise the gods that live in tea-light flames, tinsel, and tin ornaments (Jupiter’s metal). It’s somehow easier to remember, in Sagittarius season, that the constellations themselves flicker with the joinery of stories that span millenia. That the oceans of emptiness between each fixed star are alive with metaphoric leaps. That the projection of our humanity, in all its delulu fallibility, onto the firmament above has bent the arc of our cosmos toward something more benevolent than entropic. Perhaps. As Simone Weil said, “Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love. Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.”
Sagittarius is given more to the epic than the small, interlocking rooms of the sonnet. And this is exactly why I think the Saturn rulership of that last decan is so productive — even if melancholy can haunt this part of the year. For the easily scattered flames of Sagittarius, Saturn provides the hearth. The metal poker. I’ve rediscovered the deep comfort of falling asleep as beeswax candles burn in our bedside lantern and make the room feel as if it’s breathing with us.
As Austin Coppock writes of this decan, “A primordial goddess, Necessity, here holds sway. When we look back, we see her behind us, hot on our heels like a wolf, red-eyed and baleful. Yet she also beckons from just over the next hill, glowing gold and warm, her arms wide to congratulate and embrace. We just have to get there.” Instead of the spectacle of fire spinners, this decan asks for winter logs. They may not be as glamorous as wands or fire-tipped arrows but they faithfully hold the day’s heat, which winter requires we ration. The cut glass surfaces of winter baubles refract December’s meager light and remind us that after the solstice it will build steadily again. A miracle, undoubtedly. Never gets old, that one.
The third decan also brings to mind these lines from Gaston Bachelard’s Psychoanalysis of Fire, in which the ritual of flame-gazing is elevated as a conduit for the processing of sorrows — its sinuous, constantly shifting abstractions a reminder that nothing is fixed. Not even grief’s sticky liquors.
“In any case it is the pensive man whom we wish to study here, the man pensively seated by his fireplace in complete solitude at a time when the fire is burning brightly as if it were the very voice of this solitude… this slightly hypnotized condition, that is surprisingly constant in all fire watchers, is highly conducive to psycho-analytical investigation. A winter's evening with the wind howling around the house and a bright fire within is all that is required to make the grieving soul give voice to its memories and sorrows: It is the mured voice of the dying winter embers which enchants this heart of mine, this heart which like the covered flame sings as it is consumed.”
I wrote a bunch more about Saturn and Neptune’s ambiguous Piscean pact through history — but will scuttle it into another post because Matt is doing the pub quiz and I need a little escapism this New Moon eve. In any case, this festive track by Brighton’s Porridge Radio has a slightly deranged edge that feels appropriate. Merry Nu Moon! xoxo
Happening CJ my Neptune and AC. Happy New Moon 🌑
Your writing is so beautiful. I love this: “It’s somehow easier to remember, in Sagittarius season, that the constellations themselves flicker with the joinery of stories that span millenia. That the oceans of emptiness between each fixed star are alive with metaphoric leaps. That the projection of our humanity, in all its delulu fallibility, onto the firmament above has bent the arc of our cosmos toward something more benevolent than entropic. “ 😍😍😍