Just as the calendar year is ending, we’ll have a New Moon at 9° 43’ Capricorn on December 30 at 2:26 Pacific time. This is the second New Moon in December (the first was on November 30/ December 1). A second New Moon in the same month is called a Black Moon.
In truth, any New Moon is a Black Moon because when the Moon is very close to and conjoined with the Sun, the Moon reflects no light and is unseen. The Moon’s first sliver of light, as it begins to wax, appears only a day or two later.
The dark Moon is fertile with possibilities, like seeds fermenting underground. When the Moon has barely begun to wax, that’s an optimal time to set one’s intentions. And when the Moon is new in Capricorn, those intentions are likely to be specific, concrete goals. It’s time to open a new calendar, maybe end a winter vacation and get back to work.
Capricorn is the cardinal, initiatory, earth sign. Its totem animals are the industrious, mountain-climbing goat, as well as the sea goat, a mythical creature that’s adaptable to living on both land and sea. Capricorn’s qualities include focus, discipline, ambition, long-term planning, and building things that last. Like its opposite number, Cancer, Capricorn’s style is parental, though because Capricorn iss ruled by Saturn, the nurturing, Capricornian-style, may be more rule-bound, even stern.
The December 30 New Moon at 9 Capricorn is moving toward an awkward quincunx (an approximately 150-degree angle) with Jupiter, which is now in one of its retrograde periods, in inquisitive Gemini. Something about one’s great plans to forge ahead with hard work (Capricorn) may be temporarily tripped up by having to rethink (Gemini) the information at hand.
The Moon is moving also toward an encouraging sextile (60-degree angle) relationship with Saturn, in Pisces. Jupiter and Saturn—respectively in Gemini and Pisces of late—have been in a square with each other for a long off-and-on transit from August of 2024 that will last until June of 2025.
Jupiter is a force of expansion, Saturn one of limits. The tense square between them is like having one foot on the gas and one foot on the brakes. That’s not a bad thing because there’s wisdom in knowing when and how to exert oneself and when and how to slow down. The Capricorn New Moon is in the mix with this tension. While many endeavors are like a sprint, many more are best approached like a marathon.
Another major transit at this New Moon time is the ongoing opposition between Mars and Pluto, in play from November 2024 until late April of 2025. Mars is now in a retrograde period in the early degrees of Leo (moving backward into Cancer on January 6), and Pluto has just recently entered Aquarius for the next two decades. Leo and Aquarius are both fixed signs. They’re don’t want to budge. Mars is ready for a fight. Pluto reveals the fault-lines of power.
A Mars/Pluto opposition takes form, most obviously, in bare-knuckled power struggles between warring parties. This is headline news. On national and international stages, circumstances feel to be on fire (Mars in Leo) and/or about to explode (Pluto). On view now is the rising and seemingly insurmountable power of Big Tech oligarchs, averse as they are to any sense of social responsibility.
Plutonian power is the kind that simmers below the surface, before erupting and unmasking uncomfortable truths. Mars is the drive to get things done. Mars and Pluto, facing off, can bring danger and also the potential for personal power. Mars is about what we want. Pluto’s about revealing what it will take to get what we want. There’s personal power to be found in confronting one’s true desires and getting motivated to do what it will take to get there. That’s right in sync with the Capricornian impetus to forge ahead, to build something that lasts.
After the December 30 New Moon, the next major transit of this winter season will be the shift in the signs of the Moon’s nodal axis, from Libra/Aries, to Virgo/Pisces on January 11, for the next year and a half.
Astrology works as the study of correspondences, as in the maxim “As above, so below.” Planets are physical bodies; they’re also symbolic archetypes. Just as symbolic are pairs of invisible points in the sky, called nodes, where the orbit of the Moon intersects with the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. On an 18-month cycle, the lunar nodes shift backwards from one pair of opposite signs to another. Throughout the history of astrology, these shifts in the lunar nodal axis have been studied in correlation with collective and individual destinies. That’s a long way of saying that when the lunar nodal axis changes signs every 18 months, there’s a new focus on a new set of themes, for everyone, and especially so for people with charts strongly aligned with the lunar nodes’ current signs.
While the lunar nodes have been in Libra/Aries from for about the last year and a half, there has been a focus on issues of cooperative relationships and/or individual freedom. The Virgo/Pisces axis, beginning in January, shifts the focus to themes of control and service, in different ways.
Virgo’s style is one of developing craft and skill, seeking improvement, even perfection, for oneself, and to serve others. Pisces doesn’t care so much about perfection, because Pisces’ inclinations are for acceptance, and even unconditional love, for all. To some extent, Virgo wants control. Pisces says: loosen up on the control.
While the nodes will be in Virgo/Pisces for the next 18 months, there’s an invitation to zero in on self-improvement, whether that be with one’s health or finances, or learning more do-it-yourself skills, but also thinking about where one can loosen up one’s habits and just “be.”
A perfect time to get started, with new crafts as well as with calm abiding, is while the Sun’s in Capricorn, a sign of the Earth. The best ways I know to meditate with the earth element include the occasional joy of digging and planting, with my bare hands in soil. On a daily basis, I attune to the earth element by noting the feel of my flat feet on the ground, then consciously breathing, in and out, as if through the soles of my feet.
Earth is this place, here and now, its density binding the Creator and all of Creation together.
Blessings for the Capricorn Black Moon and for the best of possibilities for 2025!
Sara
Sara R. Diamond, an astrologer based in the San Francisco Bay Area, is a life-long student and practitioner in several esoteric paths. Her style of astrology combines modern-psychological astrology with insights from traditional astrology. Sara is also an estate planning attorney. In addition, she has published four books on right-wing movements in the United States and earned her Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. You are invited to contact Sara via her website at www.SaraDiamondAstrology.com.
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