Astrology Dec 31 – Jan 9 (II♑️): Building a Year

The Sun enters the second decan of Capricorn on December 31^st. This decan is a place of dreaming and building, labor and design. It is both architectural and heroic, for it requires both patience and effort. Here we build a plan out of our ambitions, and then get to work on working reality into that pattern. It is contemplative, but actively so. Choices must be made. The doorway can be arched or square, it cannot be both at once. Two designs cannot exist simultaneous in the same room.

The plan will take work to carry out, but it takes work to imagine in the first place. It could not be more appropriate that the Sun travels this decan during the first days of the vulgar New Year, as this is the time when people imagine what they will do and not-do over the coming year.

Yet for all the talk and temporarily fierce conviction, there usually precious little thought put it into it. A significant proportion of New Year’s resolutions are merely the reaction to hangovers of one sort or another, half-assed attempts at absolution for little guilts. “I should really lose some weight, I should try to save more, I really need to work on being nicer to ____”

Health, wealth and love are certainly life-categories worth improving, but in order to achieve these things, you need to clarify your motives and create a blueprint.

Let’s speak of motives first. Everyone understands that passion moves mountains. Yet we cannot simply “be more passionate.” Passion is not a created thing, it is a discovered thing. We don’t make our passion, we find it. It already exists. You have to uncover it, scrape the psychic detritus

off. Once recovered, it can be alchemically heated and refined, but one must first have the materia itself.

Fortunately, the recovery and clarification of passion is exactly the topic of one this decan’s most notable configurations- the rare conjunction of the Sun, Venus and Pluto which occurs on January 8^th.

With the conjunction, the Sun as mighty spiritual furnace burns away the dross Venus has accumulated over the previous 9 months. It is a fire ceremony into which yesterday’s delights and disappointments are cast. Yet the fire leaves something behind, something untouched by flame, for it is of fire itself. What remains after a proper burn is passion, primordial and unblemished.

This conjunction of Venus and the Sun occurs in the second decan of Capricorn, and thus speaks directly to the matters of life architecture already in play. That it occurs conjunct Pluto gives the conjunction greater depth. It is not merely the accumulated emotional dross of the previous 9 months which the Sun’s fire will lick at, but those more persistent encrustations which you’ve carried for years, or even lifetimes. They are stubborn enough to have resisted the flames before, but this time, with a little help from you, the purifying flames have the potential to reach into the very bowels of Hades. Some of it might smell like a burning tire once it catches, but the stink will be worth it.

The other significant configuration which occurs during this span of days is the conjunction of Mars and Jupiter in Scorpio. This is a fierce and triumphant conjunction, the proper mindset of conquerors and the seed of great victories. It alloys optimism and relentlessness, and while it shines you will have the capacity to envision victories you are normally too modest to dream.

Take the regalia of the conqueror from Mars and Jupiter, and the clarified passion of the Venus-Sun conjunction, for they are exactly what you need to build the year before you. Do not rush to commit to half-ass, guilty resolutions. Clarify your passion and stoke your courage, for they are exactly what you will need to build the year you desire.

Give the skies time to offer you these boons. Spend the days of this decan receiving these empowerments and constructing your blueprint. Do not start building before the design is complete- give yourself at least until the New Moon later in the month to break ground. 2018 will not be kind to hastily laid plans. It will test even good ones, but has rewards of satisfaction and accomplishment waiting for those who can bring together passion, courage and patience.

It is a poor architect who does not become familiar with the land they would raise a palace from. It is thus important to get to know the terrain of 2018. I’ve done an extensive cartographic survey, “2018: The Lay of the Land” so please do make use of it. As you look across the year, try not look at it as something which is going to happen to you, but as something which you will happen to. It is the terrain, you are the builder.