For much of the last month, my apartment smelled of pine cones. I had impulsively purchased them at my local grocer here in Brooklyn — something seasonal, something to harken back to the country wilderness of my youth in the cityscape of my adulthood. Their scent quickly overwhelmed the wildly overpriced woodsy candles I burn 12 hours a day, every day.
My delight with the pine cones bordered on childlike glee. I put them on my altars; my girlfriend bought me fresh holly to intersperse with them so that my apartment looked a merry wildness for Yule. Every childhood memory of collecting pine cones in Iowa, of getting lost in the woods with friends in Wisconsin came rushing back. Pine cones are a reliable find for a kid playing outside in the winter snow.
It wasn’t until my adulthood that I learned of a hardier pine cone, one that I didn’t grow up seeing. Serotinous pine cones have hard, thick shells that are quite literally glued shut with a near-impenetrable coat of resin. These cones will patiently sit on a tree for years and years, seed dissemination delayed or occurring gradually, waiting for the right conditions.
The right conditions, of course, are the kind of fire hot and fast and wild enough to inspire total, utter transformation — burning away the resin, the cone blossoming like a flower, the seeds scattering off to plant new pine trees.
“Some seeds cannot sprout until they are first burned.”
-Critical Role
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Today, there is a New Moon in Capricorn, and it truly bears repeating that every new moon is not created equally. The conditions of the sky, like the conditions here on the ground, are ever changing. As someone born under a New Moon in Capricorn, I would love to tell you all that today is a great day for manifesting something you’d like to build over the long-term, but that is simply not the case. I don’t say this to say that if you are starting something new, don’t; by all means, please, go with where your energy is. But if you are in any way expecting yourself to begin or renew something because it is a New Moon: do feel free to sit this one out. Today’s moon sits almost exactly with Pluto, the planet of transformation and intensity and stripping away pretense, after all.
See: the pine cone. And the fire.
We have been learning a lot this Capricorn season about time, and if one thing is true, it’s that even an auspicious Capricorn New Moon — even one not occurring during a white supremacist insurrection — would not be the kind of moon where the results were quick. That’s simply not the way of winter, or of Saturn.
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There is no other way to say it: This is a difficult winter. If anything, I see today’s moon as a call to honor the slow transformation that is happening in real time — the growth of our own pine cones that we cannot see until that wildfire comes and sets them ablaze. As a call to protection of your creativity and vulnerability, as well as that of the community you are engaged with. As a call to attention, to mindfulness, to sitting with yourself (not on social media).
Writer Jan Woolf recently shared with the London Writer’s Salon,
“I take to heart the fable, the Hare and the Tortoise. The tortoise wins because he trundles steadily in his own time and terrain. But the hind legs of the hare — thumping, hare brained towards the finishing line — are her own worst enemy. She 'knows' she’ll win so takes a nap en route, and loses. Don’t I sound like the sussed one? But I’ve only recently discovered time as writing’s nourishment. Not so long ago, I liked the idea of the jet-ski style of writing. I have to get on that island over there, so rev it up and speed across. I now think of the oil tanker turning at sea, incrementally, an angle at a time before facing the right direction. Then with all her strength taking her cargo to the intended place.”
Give yourself — and your creativity — what you need in the weeks to come, even if it doesn’t seem all that related to “work” or “productivity.”
Trust the process. Trust the need for time. Trust the seeds growing in that pine cone.
P.S. Registration for my new course, Astrology for Writers: How to Make Your Writing Work for You, closes on January 31! As a newsletter subscriber, take $100 off with the code “solstice.”
the new moon in capricorn for writers
"Trust the process. Trust the need for time. Trust the seeds growing in that pine cone." Love this walk off. It was really helpful to know what this New Moon in Capricorn is about, and to allow myself the time to slowly and steadily keep keepin' on. Thank you so much for this post, Jeanna!