It’s now Cancer Season and we are almost immediately greeted with a full moon in Capricorn, bringing structure before we melt deep into the emotionality of the sign of the crab. The moon brings into light what we have been navigating through Gemini Season, the eclipses and Mercury Retrograde. It has been a lot to process, and we’ve been on quite the adventure these past few weeks, now hopefully with a little more clarity around our mental spaces and constructs, ready for some embodied processing and boundaries.

 

Some interesting themes that have come into focus recently is that we receive only what serves us, what needs to be revealed to us, that we tap into what is relevant for us at any given moment. Which in a sense I feel is true. If listened to, our intuition guides us on a path of what is desired to be discovered, paths along energetic imprints of our divine charts.

 

I see Mercury Retrograde periods as a time for readjusting our filters, or to clean out our filters, just like we do a vacuum. With so much information and stimulation available to us at our fingertips we can consume too much with noise that spans far and wide. When we have moments of review we get to clean out those filters, shorten the range, re-evaluate the amount of stimulation, so we can 'hear' the unique path that is being revealed. Which is why it can sometimes feel chaotic as we readjust our filter fields during a retrograde and its stations.

 

This full moon somewhat joyously reveals what structures may be needed for more emotional safety around what has been recently discovered. Cancer season is a return to the roots, the motherland, and with an opposing moon in father Capricorn a theme of self parenting is apparent.

 

What new information do you have about yourself that requires some life adjustments to cater for a new way of being? How can you nourish these new parts, even if you are still unsure of them? Can you gently encourage in others around you who are exploring new facets of themselves too?

 

Turning down the noise of the mind chatter and dropping into intuition can ease the over-intellectualisation of a moment, and will help shift gears into Cancer Season where we can drop deeper into the roots of a matter with more feeling, flow, with softer bodies and warmer hearts.

 

There is a little more optimism in the air, especially if we are willing to navigate the squishy places within our own shells and support others to do the same.

I don’t always like to open up a conversation with a quote; yet Capricorn is honored to show deference to the masters. Austrian Psychologist and Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl in his landmark work Man’s Search for Meaning said, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
 
I can only see the Capricorn salute when I read this quote. The “space” Frankl mentions here is what I want to discuss with you for the Full Moon in Capricorn. If we want to see the 10th sign, the Seagoat, Saturn’s descendent Capricorn fully, we’ll want to remember that its symbol was a mythological animal who belonged to both the land and the sea. So often we talk about Capricorn’s connection to the land; the ambition, integrity, discipline, leadership potential, and generative power within and with others. So I want to pin the fish tail back on the Seagoat a bit and explore Capricorn’s connection to the sea. 
 
We can reduce Capricorn to emotional stoicism, false-compartmentalizing when we imagine Capricorn as the grounded one; but I think something more majestic is happening. Harkening back to Frankl here and the space between stimulus and the response, I think Capricorn is appointed to understand and demonstrate the role of emotion regulation. Capricorn is here to teach us who we want to be in between stimulus and response. Culture gives us a little too much leeway to offload pain onto others with blame and judgement. Instead of asking, “Who would I be if I accepted I’m in pain in this arena … but I don’t have to act from it?” 
 
I mention this question because this Full Moon is emerging in the middle of a T-Square among: Mars in Leo, Uranus in Taurus, and Saturn in Aquarius. These are 3 of the 4 fixed signs who - when left unregulated - can maintain unyielding, dogmatic consistency; rather than changing their approach because they’re unhappy with the results. This Full Moon is in cardinal initiation Capricorn and sextiled by mutable Jupiter in Pisces. And so we’re given the chance to experience the stimulus space in a way that helps us change what needs to be changed because our outcomes aren’t the ones we want. And we’ll be helped as we hold faith and hope in our hearts that we’re more supported in the stimulus space than we realize. 
 
That Frankl space is the Capricorn mountain we’re asked to climb and it’s a paradox between self-acceptance and self-improvement. The balance between self-compassion and healthy-striving. I think the value of emotion regulation is key here. That way, we can experience more resilience, boundaries, perseverance and the spaciousness to process our emotions without inflicting harm on others. Let us together demonstrate emotional agility, emotional health, and disclosure this Full Moon and evermore because we owe it to ourselves and the people we’re in connection and community with.