The moon is full and ripe in the night sky, and Summer is maturing as it moves deeper into its character. What are you noticing in your body? Who are you becoming this season? It’s a Blue Moon; the second Full moon in Capricorn – the first one was on the Summer Solstice. If we let ourselves play with this archetype, we can invite and revisit with our ability to bring something into reality, to give form to a dream or a desire, to participate or assist a birthing process.
If you need extra help with a project or a vision that you’ve been working on, and you’re ready to breathe life into it, this moon’s fullness is your friend.
You might have deep knowledge of astronomy, or a serious relationship with astrology. If you’re like me, maybe it’s more of a flirty vibe with the moon and a girl crush on the constellations, not a faith based bromance. But the stories and the symbols, the mythic and the metaphorical, inspire you like nobody’s business. Either way… hi! Welcome to this playground of archetypes! I am so glad we get to be here together!
Capricorn brings persistence, and the willingness to work hard for something we care about. It’s an energy that supports life, gifted with the capacity to support others in their process of becoming.
So if you feel like you can use the help of this midwife energy, and you’ve been in labor since the Summer Solstice, why not imagine that this moment with this blue moon is your reminder to not give up, your invitation to look at alternative ways, your call into the depth of your passion laced with compassion for yourself and others. And why not brew a little tincture of patience too.
A blue moon implies something rare. What if this was a rare chance to step into your power, and to get in there with your discipline so that you can build the structures that support you?
The emotional depth of this lunar cycle that is infused with the homemaking, maternal presence of the Cancer archetype is a reminder to bring consideration for mental and emotional health into the structures we create and the disciplines we practice. The moon’s influence and the earthiness of Capricorn ask that the body will be taken into consideration too.
This is a blue moon moment that invites us to mature along with the solar year, and to embody the well roundedness of Summer’s fruit and the fullness of the moon.
We have moved through the threshold of the middle of the year, and we get another chance with a second full moon accompanied by this midwife character. Capricorn is an inner guide who coaches us through the process of becoming, and through the tasks of bringing projects into the world. It shows up as teachers and allies we meet along the way. It reveals itself through the messages we’re able to receive from the natural world. It offers itself through conversations, through dreams, and through the content we consume.
I love that this hard working, earthy, disciplined, and reliable zodiac sign is called Capricorn, related to the word Capricious. Stability is never without the danger of volatility. No matter how hard we try to hold the world together, reality is fickle, with inconsistent, unpredictable elements. Even this deliberate, ambitious character has a wild side.
The horns of the goat, after all, imply a deep relationship with Pan, who is the archetype of wildness, nature’s untamed power, the animal instinctual self, that predates what we think of as Ancient Greece. Pan is the breath of life moving through trees, in and out of lungs, in between places, the hooves of the goat kicking the ground, and the primal desire that pulses under the surface of every living thing.
Those horns became associated with the Devil once christianity took over the world. The church demonized Pan’s wildness and untamed sexuality. The secret sauce of Capricorn’s seriousness is the contrast built into the Devil archetype, who is both a liberating power, and a binding one. Freedom requires discipline, and discipline can lead to more freedom. It invites us to walk the edgy terrain of the mountain, to climb with precision and attentiveness because the harshness of the landscape is also dangerous. The ambition of the capricorn archetype invites us to keep going, to climb higher, but to take our time and to do it carefully, because the stakes are high.
Capricorn is a sea goat, traversing the challenges of rocky mountain terrain, and the depth and changeability of the sea. A creature that holds more than one thing as true. A morphing, transitioning reality. A non-binary existence. The horns of the goat can push through the hard stuff of life, and they also stand for the waxing and waning of the moon. The tail of the fish shows us how to move through the world fluidly. There is flexibility and stability, adaptability and constancy that smile at us through the eyes of this archetype.
In Greek mythology, Amalthea was a mountain nymph goat, who was the foster mother of Zeus, nursing, nourishing and nurturing him after his mother, Rhea, gave birth to him in the goat nymph’s cave, and hid him there, in the mountains of Crete, from his rageful father, Cronus.
Capricorn season in the northern hemisphere begins with the Winter Solstice. The moon is full in Capricorn during Cancer season, which begins on the Summer Solstice. We get to dance with the sun and the moon as mother and midwife, and embody the nurturing qualities of both. And this year we get to do it twice, and emphasize something that wants to come through us, or highlight something we want to support in the world. What needs care and attention in your life right now? What needs to be nursed in a dark cave so that it can come into its power?
Amalthea raised Zeus with generosity and love. She even broke one of her horns at some point, and filled it with fruit and flowers, with all the abundance of Summer, and gifted it to Zeus. This is, of course, the Cornucopia; the horn of plenty. The story says that Zeus was so grateful that he gave his foster mother and her horn of plenty an eternal place in the sky, turning her into the constellation of Capricorn.
This moon’s fullness invites us to the cautious, calculated energy of Capricorn commingled with the the abundance and generosity of the Cornucopia, into nurturing qualities woven together with discipline, into the wild that must accompany the calm, into our capacity to be both liquid and rock, deep and rational, stable and dangerous, reliable and capricious, ambitious and delicious.
If this message speaks to you, and you are into archetypes, myths, and deep inner work, you’ll LOVE the Lughnasadh Somatic Ceremony. We’ll be diving into interesting stories that bring the next phase of Summer to life, and embody the symbolic language through ritual practices. All the details are here.
Share this message with a loved one. Have a conversation about some of the things this message stirs in you. And let me know what you came up with. What are you birthing, and how does your conversation support your process?
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And check out this FREE video exploration of the Capricorn Full Moon.
Make this moon meaningful.
Much love,
Hagar