the full moon in capricorn for writers
Hi everyone,
A quick reminder that my self-paced course Astrology for Writers: How to Make Your Writing Work for You will only be available for download until midnight tonight! If I’m totally realistic with myself, this is likely the last time the course will be released in 2022; with book promotion already kicking up (HERETIC comes out in October), I have a feeling that’s going to consume the rest of my calendar year.
And speaking of HERETIC: the first Goodreads giveaway is underway, if you’re active over there and would like to enter for a chance to win an early copy!
Also also also. Paid subscriptions help pay my bills, and also ensure that the newsletter stays up and running. I’ve been writing it for 3 years and really want to continue to do so. If you can, please consider upping your subscription!
With that, let’s get into the Full Moon in Capricorn.
Xx,
Jeanna
In my new apartment, I can see the moon.
Let me back up. As some of y’all may know, my long-time girlfriend and I moved in together, to a new apartment, at the beginning of July. We’re in our mid-to-late thirties. We’re both divorced. We’ve been together for a few years. This was, emphatically, not a U-Haul. But it was very stressful, in that way that moving in New York City is stressful, in that way that the market — whatever the fiction of “the market” means this particular year — is stressful, in how no amount of money self-employed people make is ever enough for landlords, in how there is unexpected expense after unexpected expense. How even those most dedicated to staying in New York can, in the middle of a move like ours, look at each other and be like, why do we live here again? even as our hearts know there’s nowhere else we would rather be. As the country around us tells us, news cycle after new cycle, that there are few places safer for uterus-having queer women to be.
So, the moon.
My old apartment, which friends affectionately called the Barbie Dream House, was quiet. So quiet. It overlooked tree-filled backyards. There were so many birds. Cardinals and blue jays and even crows from time to time. An oasis I knew that I was unlikely to get a second time. One to be cherished while it lasted.
Our new apartment is not quiet. It is on a busy street. We look down, and there is traffic. So much traffic. I know that I will eventually tune it out, like I eventually tuned out the planes overhead when I lived under a flight path close to MSP International in Minneapolis more than a decade ago.
But there is a saving grace, amidst the noise I am learning to live with. Here, I can see the moon.
The Barbie Dream House was quiet, but from the particular angle of my windows, I usually could not see the moon unless I pressed my face to the glass and cranked my neck. If I was coming home late, I had to catch a glance before walking inside. Say hello. Acknowledge her.
But here in our new home, she’s right there, above all the traffic and city lights. We can see her in the evening when we’re cuddled up on the couch.
Hello, moon. Goodnight, moon.
Rituals can be that simple.
In times like these, where there is little energy — whether because you’re exhausted from moving or simply the news of the world we’re living in — sometimes they have to be.
*
On Wednesday, July 13 at 2:37p Eastern, the Full Moon is exact at 21* of Capricorn. In the middle of a season that is about nourishing, about care, about those we consider family, this moon asks us to check in on the structures that are supporting those systems. As my fellow Cap moon natives are aware, the moon isn’t all that comfortable here: the moon, after all, is where we find tenderness for the body, for our feelings, for our relationships. Capricorn’s best strategies struggle to fit with the purpose of this planet: You can’t build your way to tenderness, necessarily. There isn’t a perfect, predictable process you can assign to processing every feeling every time.
If we are mindfully setting aside the obvious strategies for Capricorn, then what are we left with? Intention. Apply Capricorn’s desire for consistency and its strategic support towards those Cancerian care instincts. The urge to be there for everyone but yourself needs to be paired with a deliberateness that knows your oxygen mask goes on first. The desire to show up for community in times of crisis can be paired with the strategic understanding that those systems already exist and that the weight of the world doesn’t rest on your shoulders alone — so how do you join others’ efforts and contribute to those actions already in motion?
This Full Moon, of course, is occurring within a few degrees of Pluto, and the transformative, subversive energies of the underworld are also a part of this story. We are tearing down in order to rebuild. This Plutonian threat of potential earthquakes, of finding secrets in the depths, has a particular edge in Cancer season, on a Full Moon where the Cancer-Capricorn axis is so profoundly concerned with both emotional and material security. Not so fast, Pluto says. How sure is our collective foundation? What materials were used? What needs to be stripped away — what needs to fall, to fail — in order for something more holistic to be rebuilt in its place?
*
In these newsletters, I often tell folks to look six months earlier to see what you were doing around the New Moon in the appropriate sign to see what’s come to fruition. To see what fullness you’re collecting on, what transformation you’ve reaped.
On this year’s New Moon in Capricorn — January 2, 2022 — I was in the middle of my second hospitalization for a burst appendix, for which the antibiotics they’d sent me home with after a previous 8-day hospitalization weren’t working. Infection was rapidly worsening. Because of where infections were located, they couldn’t yet get a drain inserted. The doctors told my partner and me that it was far too dangerous to even consider operating.
Suffice it to say, I was in no shape to do a ritual — I couldn’t even take a shower on my own. I didn’t do much of anything except lay in a hospital bed, waiting to see what my vitals were every few hours.
In those weeks both leading up to and following that New Moon, I felt pretty fucking bereft of the structure my natal Capricorn moon so desperately craves in order to feel functional. But what happened, at some indeterminate point, was that I stopped fighting the lack of control — stopped trying to tell my partner that no, I didn’t want to call an ambulance (the decision that saved my life in the first place), stopped insisting that I didn’t want to tell people what was going on, stopped questioning why the doctors said they couldn’t operate — and just trust fell into the support that I was, in fact, already receiving.
Eventually, I was strong enough to get out of bed and walk my IV pole to my room’s singular window overlooking the park, where I could see sunsets over the Brooklyn skyline — and, when it got dark, the moon.
*
A little over six months later, I feel like a different person. Not just because I’m now missing a vestigial organ that I didn’t need in the first place (truly, why are appendices), but rather, because that experience stripped away and clarified so much. After my hospitalizations, my girlfriend and I spent two months living together; she was my full-time caretaker. If we could live together that easily while under the strain of a health crisis, then moving in was a no-brainer — and here we are, at the Full Moon in Capricorn, in our new place. My relationship with my body has also shifted, in that there are lingering, residual effects from the crisis that I’m still learning to deal with. My writing has also been impacted by that experience, in that it is now going to (hopefully) feature as an essay in my next book project.
Given the year we’ve had, it’s likely that you or someone you love has had some kind of crisis this year. This is only being exacerbated by the increasing disintegration of our country’s institutions. The weight is heavy. The fear is real. And you may not have a lot of energy for “ritual.” For ceremony. For magic big or small.
Looking at the moon is a ritual. Saying hello to the trees on your street, or in your yard, is a ritual. Paying attention is all that’s required. The moon’s cycles continue regardless of whether we light a candle. All we have to do is be awake.
Writing Prompts for the Full Moon in Capricorn
What makes you feel secure? Comforted? Held? Is there something about this habit/strategy that needs to change or be transformed? Do you prioritize security over nourishment? Do you prioritize others’ comfort over your own?
Where in your life have you been experiencing transformation? How has this felt? What is uncomfortable? What is exciting?
Thank you for this!