Sun into Capricorn; claiming our authority
There’s no avoiding it, we’re set to have an intense Capricorn season. As I write, the rules around Covid seem to change daily here in the UK and nobody feels able to keep up. With a final hit of Saturn square Uranus on December 24th, a few days after the Sun arrives in Capricorn on December 21st, the tension between authority and freedom which has characterised this year reaches another peak. It doesn’t go away in 2022 either, although hopefully, it will be less intense. By now the hard work of awakening is well underway and once again the dynamic between resistance and growth is driving us forward. Issues around resources and how they are used, around what is definitively true (if there even is such a thing), around what is fixed and necessary and where we can break free, all of these are at play right now. We are all climbing the mountain, inching our way through pandemic life. You’d think we’d be good at living with uncertainty by now but maybe we’re just not made that way.
On December 19th, just before the Sun’s ingress into Capricorn, Venus turns retrograde in Capricorn. She’ll meet Pluto a total of three times (one has already happened) over the next few weeks, taking us deep into the underworld. Our values take centre stage and we are called to look within, to figure out what is most important to us. Issues around self worth and inner authority are also likely to arise.
Because authority is often what it’s all about with Capricorn and also with the Saturn Uranus square. I’ve been wondering about this and what it means, so I took a little dive into the word authority and where it comes from. Its origins are the same as “author”, meaning someone who gives a definitive opinion or argument, rooted in the idea of the bible as the definitive truth. Ideas around authority as being someone or something entitled to obedience don’t appear until around 1650 and the concept of authority as an order imposed on individual freedoms doesn’t appear until the mid 19th century. The Latin root is auctoritatem, meaning an invention, opinion or advice as well as a command. The original sense of the word was a source of information and by extension, a creator of reality, someone who decides what is real - as an author creates a version of reality when they write. The imposition of that authority on others came later. Which brings me back to Capricorn as how we define and experience our inner authority, not just the authority imposed by others. A need to claim our own inner authority is often what’s behind our issues with external authorities, the current sorry state of those external authorities notwithstanding. Saturn in Aquarius reminds us that we need to keep the collective in mind, we can’t just do what we like because it’s not just about us. Uranus in Taurus, with some help from Venus retrograde, calls us to figure out our own values and do our best to create a life which honours those values. The tension between them is what sparks our growth.