The Moon has just followed Venus into Capricorn, where the New Moon will occur Friday at 19:44 Greenwich Mean Time (2:44 p.m. in the U.S. Eastern Time Zone).

Over the last twenty-four hours, a day deep in  the Dark Moon before Friday’s Capricorn New Moon, the Cosmic Feminine has activated the dynamic crucible of change known as the Cardinal Cross. First Venus and then the Moon have moved into Capricorn’s first degree.

They’ve come to change the power balance in our lives and our world–and to guide us as we use tomorrow’s New Moon energies to build the structures where our dreams can come to life in the cosmic waters that lie ahead.  Today, these two carriers of the Cosmic Feminine hover around the Solstice Point signalling that a new energy is unfolding within us and around us.

A preview what’s to come is available to us today in the opportunity these two feminine energies are creating for our dreams and inspirations to come true, as they form a fertile and abundant sextile with Neptune the Cosmic Dreamer. By tomorrow’s New Moon, the Moon will have moved into the arms of the Sun, taking Capricorn’s power to draw energy into form to a new order of magnitude.  Venus will remain in a close sextile to Neptune, drawing the cosmic magic Earthward.

The Sabian symbol for the Winter Solstice Point tells us almost all we need to know about the meaning of the passage of Venus and Luna across this charged and potent point in the sky: “An Indian chief claim[ing] power from the assembled tribe.”  In this case, however, there are two chiefs. The energy they carry is both dynamic and receptive, nurturing and practical,  transformative and empowering–and deeply, essentially, fundamentally feminine.

It’s been fourteen months since the royal star Regulus entered Virgo, the ancient sign of the Goddess. After 2,160 years in Leo, the sign of the king, this energetically signaled the long-heralded Return of the Feminine to human consciousness. Or, as astrologer Michael Lutin put it, “The King is dead! Long live the Queen!”

One of the brightest stars in the night sky, Regulus is actually not one star but four, organized into two pairs.  Nearly a year after this massive source of stellar energy moved into Virgo, in early October 2012, Venus–known to the ancient Sumerians as Queen of Heaven and Earth–arrived to saturate herself with its vibrations. Yesterday, just two days before Friday’s New Moon in Capricorn, Venus entered the Solstice Point, to claim her power. Early this morning, the Moon joined her.

The New Moon: Building the Vessel for Your Dreams

By Friday, when the Moon and Sun merge their energies in the same degree of the skies, there will be six celestial bodies in Capricorn. The Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Pluto, and the asteroid Juno will all be in Saturn’s earthy, ambitious territory.  This is some seriously grounded energy, and it ushers in one of the most watery years we’ve seen in a long time. We’re about to feel the power of the Feminine as never before, at least not in this lifetime.

As an element, Water has no form of its own, and Earth is critical in providing a container for its powerful, fluid energy.  That’s why this New Moon is so critical.  The intentions we set now will shape the extraordinarily potent water energies ahead will take.  

A New Capricorn, a New Reality

In an extraordinarily insightful essay in The Mountain Astrologer Magazine, Nancy Austin writes about the larger implications of this first New Moon of 2012.  What the Capricorn New Moon is ushering in, Austin writes, is “a redefinition of the solar feminine encoded in the previous New and Full Moons, as well as [a transformation of] our perceptions of physical reality.”

The constellation Capricorn, home of the Winter Solstice Point on the Cardinal Cross

Capricorn is often seen as the headquarters of the patriarchy and its culture of hierarchy and domination. The ancient roots of Saturn’s sign, however, are like everything else deeply embedded in the Feminine. Like the other earth signs, Capricorn derives its power not from  assertiveness but from a profound receptivity. What Capricorn brings to the table of reality is a willingness to give form to Scorpio’s powerful desires and Sagittarius’ cosmic vision.   

As Austin notes, the dynamic potency of the cosmic energy patterns around us and within us means that our understanding of time, space, and power are all in tremendous flux. At the bottom of this shift lies a changing relationship to the cosmic matrix, and the Cosmic Feminine that is its connective and relational energy.

Like its ruler Saturn, Capricorn is associated with age, wisdom, and experience. As Pluto continues the long revolutionary journey through Saturn’s territory that he began in 2008, a tremendous amount of dormant wisdom will seem to awaken from dead. In the water journey that lies ahead of us this year, our Deep Memory will awaken too and we will remember the experience that has been sleeping there.

The seven squares that Pluto will make with Uranus over the 33 months between June 2012 and March 2015, are the seven gates for this awakening. Beginning a new cycle in Aries, Uranus—the child of Chaos who conceived the World with Gaia back in the Deep Time—is seeding the new world in the ground that Pluto is breaking open, within us and around us.

Beyond the Capricorn New Moon lies a year full of watery energies

Capricorn New Moon: Vessel for the Voyage  Through the Cosmic Waters of 2013

The New Moon falls in one of the most Earth-intense periods in all of 2013. In just two weeks, only two of the five planets gathered in Capricorn at the New Moon will remain there–Venus and Pluto. The Sun and Mercury will have joined Mars and Jupiter in Aquarius’ breakthrough territory. Almost immediately the balance will begin to tilt towards the water energies that are the defining signature of 2013.

By the end of February, seven planets will be in Pisces. In the vessels we build at this Capricorn New Moon, we will set sail across the cosmic waters. On our voyage of re-membering, we’ll realign our intuition, imagination, and the feeling response of our hearts to Life and the Cosmic Matrix that conceives, nurtures, and sustains in it each and every part. We’re building the vessel now.  Let’s build wisely, carefully, and well.