New Moon in Capricorn: The Art of Respecting Your Intention
On Thursday, January 11, at 4:57 am MST, we have our first New Moon of 2024 in the sign of Capricorn. I look at this new Moon and I can hear Aretha Franklin singing R-E-S-P-E-C-T find out what it means to me in the background. Our charts come alive when we participate with them. Wherever Capricorn is placed within our chart we are learning to respect ourselves.
We have just entered 2024. Not everyone sets resolutions or an intention for the year but most of us at the very least have a particular hope for the New Year.
Time moves quickly and everything has a season. Capricorn, the season we are currently in through January 20, takes the inspirational energy of Sagittarius and asks us to build something of value that is lasting. That is real. It is about walking the walk vs waxing on about endless possibilities without taking action. With the Saturn archetype as its ruler Capricorn yearns for the manifestation that lies beyond inspiration. But above all, Capricorn yearns for respect.
The etymology of respect is to “regard with some degree of reverence.” If you enter the word at thesaurus.com one of the words that comes up as one of the top two strongest matches is awe.
This New Moon takes place shortly after the holidays. Did you know the origin of the word holiday is actually holy day? This week on my walks through Sedona’s forest I found myself contemplating on a very practical level what it means to make something holy within our lives. To me, at the very least it would be to gaze at it from a perspective of reverence. And that requires intentionality. And then respecting that intention. Approaching it, meaning ourselves with some degree of reverence.
It’s funny that all things Saturn (the Saturn Return, Saturn’s transits and even Saturn within our natal chart)are often viewed with dread. And admittedly usually Saturn transits aren’t really “fun.” But you see, on the whole, Saturn is about mastery. He wants us to be accomplished, he wants us to be wise, he wants us to be an authority on something. (We can never spend too much time on Saturn in this lifetime–the more we know about the way Saturn works in our charts, the more liberated we become.) We could say Saturn wants us to both plant seeds and then through our actions nourish them to fruition. He wants us to steward, aka consciously care for, our lives. In other words I repeat, he wants us to treat them with respect.
So today as I contemplate Saturn and Capricorn season, I think about the life-enriching holiness of taking our inner imaginational inspirations and making them real through ongoing small actions in the outer manifest world. Of each of us building something of which we can be proud simply because it's ours. Which requires that we take agency within our own lives. This calls for us to turn towards ourselves vs away from ourselves. What do I mean by this?
Let me share a personal story as an example. It should be clear to you by now that I love the study and practice of astrology. It truly is one of the great loves of my life. I have been practicing professionally since 1987 though it was a side gig for years. Yet, from 2008 - 2012 when I was the author and originator of an internationally read series of monthly horoscope articles I used my full name Melinda without my last name as my byline. If I am telling the truth, at its core this was because at the time I was afraid of being perceived as a flake and potentially losing clients in my other business. I had turned away from myself, which could, of course, be seen in many other ways throughout my life. I had judged my true self as not being worthy and as a consequence walked around feely like a fraud much of the time.
Through a Capricorn lens, while I had respect for who I had been taught to believe I should be, I had no respect for my authentic self. It was as I learned and practiced turning towards myself that my life and my experience of it opened and changed.
Saturn, Capricorn’s ruler, also is in charge of time. As Walt Whitman said, “Every hour of every day is an unspeakable miracle.” As we set our intentions during this first New Moon of 2024 it is worth examining what we have made holy both consciously and unconsciously within our lives. We must ask ourselves whether what we have elevated as sacred simply by the act of giving it our attention is worthy of our very precious time. In other words, are we treating the precious commodity of our time as an unspeakable miracle? Are we respecting our time?
To live lives full of wonder and joy we must be the steward of our lives that our soul deserves. We must apprentice ourselves to live a life that aligns with our values. It demands that we treat ourselves and the world around us with reverence. In particular, we must treat our inner world from which all elements of our life are born with reverence.
Ask yourself as you approach the landscape of 2024 and set your intentions for this New Moon what would my life look like if I practiced approaching my life as a holiday, as though it was sacred and holy? How would my day-to-day experience be different if I respected my time and attention? Contemplating (journaling is a great exploratory tool)this will help to lay an empowering foundation for the year ahead.
I once again quote Walt Whitman “Reexamine all that you have been told… dismiss that that insults your soul.” The practice of dismissing what insults our soul is one of the core principles of respect and a worthy intention for 2024.
