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Calling in the Light: Sagittarius
Greetings from this potent time, when the darkness thickens to its extreme, and we approach both the Sagittarius New Moon on Dec. 19 (Pacific time), and the Winter Solstice on the 21st. Now is a time, for some, of quieting down, honoring the pull to enter the silence and stillness that the darkness invokes. And for others, it is a time of busyness and delight as we go through the motions acquired over a lifetime, of gift making and giving, holiday decorating, gathering with family and close friends, and perhaps singing and making merry with sweet treats and warm glogg.
For myself, both extremes ring true. This is the ongoing dance, of finding ways to weave the inner, spiritual threads that ever beckon, with the demands and conventions of outer life. And in the season of Sagittarius, we get to say ‘it’s all good’, wherever we find ourselves on the spectrum of fullness and emptiness, of light and darkness, of convivializing and withdrawing.
David Whyte’s poem above speaks strongly to the need to honor the darkness, which “pulls in everything,” and which he senses has a “great energy,” one that is just nearby. He takes faith in this darkness, knowing, as the soul knows, that this is where we issue from, the dark womb of the Universe.
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Kindling the light's return
Likewise, mythologist/storyteller Michael Meade, in his podcast, “Bringing Back the Light,” describes how the dark time invites us to recall our deep interconnectedness with the Cosmos.
Sagittarius is a ‘pinnacle’ time, when the nights are longest in the northern hemisphere (or shortest in the southern), and likewise, when we may be called to extremes of feeling within, both the heights and the depths. At such a time of winter dark Meade points out how to Indigenous peoples, it was felt to be a human responsibility to help call back in the light, so to avoid being consumed by the powerful dark. To do so, of course, there were—and still are— the ritual lighting of lights: of bonfires, candles, and in our cities, towns and homes, colorful string lights, which are up the wazoo this year, I must say. Which is no surprise, given the precipice of looming darkness we hang from in so many ways, with the disarray of culture and Earth’s natural systems.
And of course, calling back the light within ourselves is another endeavor we are charged with. For this, we turn to our own inner Sun—our hearts—kindled with love, kindness, and warmth, which we share both with others, and with ourselves, bringing heat to the cold places, and light to the dark ones. This is the Sagittarius impulse, which the Sun has been journeying through this month, one which seeks to expand and brighten our vision, to see the light even if in the faraway distance, to take solace in the larger meaning behind our mundane doings, to illuminate our way with wisdom, and joy.
Kindling the light’s return from darkness reminds us of the innate sacredness of life, and our capacity to find renewal and rebirth at the darkest hour. To do so, we turn towards the sacred.
This has traditionally involved embracing our connection with nature—with both earth and sky. The non-human world has always been a part of the story of both the winter solstice, and Jesus’s birth. The animals gathered round the manger, the wise men were guided by a star, and the pagan carols celebrate ‘the holly and the ivy,’ ‘the running of the deer,’ and the comforts of the stars that ‘brightly shine’. These for centuries have brought humans their gladdening at the time of cold and dark.
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Revisioning abundance
Another aspect of the Jupiter-ruled Sagittarius archetype we may feel at this time is the seeking for abundance. Jupiter, and thereby Sagittarius, expands what it touches. And so, if we have lights, we might feel we need many of them—more than last year! Or if we decorate our homes for the season, why not make little altars to aspects of this time we cherish, all over the house? (I’m guilty of this this year.) If we send cards, and can find the time, let’s send them to all our loved and dear ones. Or if we give gifts to our children, why not ‘show our love’ with an abundance of them! This is part of why this season can be so exhausting!
Another way I’ve been pondering this quality of abundance lately, as a revisioning of it, was inspired by a writer and artist from England whom I follow, Caroline Ross, in her Substack blog Uncivil Savant. Ross is a forager by nature—gleaning materials for her art (all her materials are hand-made). And in a post (which I somehow can no longer find, hence no link) she was reflecting on how nowadays, many in her circles shy away from foraging or gathering from nature, having been cowed into thinking it’s not theirs to take, that the earth’s resources are limited and that we must pull back on harvesting.
This is of course likely in response to the pillaging of the earth that’s been undertaken by developers, corporations, and industry, for far too long. No, the earth is not theirs to help themselves to! So we mustn’t, in our own small way, take anything for ourselves either, is the thinking. But Ross points out that if we are careful and wise in our collecting, taking only where there is already abundance, and from places more hidden to the public eye, the Earth is actually glad to offer its fruits to us!
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This echoes what I wrote in my Capricorn blog at the start of this year, when discussing the “Ethics of Reciprocity” as described by Indigenous teacher and writer, Robin Wall Kimmerer. It’s not about never harvesting, Kimmerer points out, but about doing so with care and respect, and with the idea of somehow giving back to the Earth in exchange for what it generously offers us. She points to gratitude, and the capacity to discern ‘enoughness’, as being critical anecdotes to the rampant consumption that has diseased our culture.
Archetypally, Capricorn has the impulse to conserve and limit, which is in counterbalance to its predecessor Sagittarius, which can become a bit too enamored with the joys of excess, which, when spoiled, become rapacious greed. We have seen what the excesses of consumption have done to our planet, and our very souls, so we do well to apprentice ourselves to the wisdom of Capricorn. Sagittarius and Capricorn (or Jupiter and Saturn, planetary significators of expansion and limitation) truly need each other, much as poison oak or ivy is ‘remedied’ by applying leaves of the sweet-smelling plant mugwort, which is often found growing near the poisonous ones!
Another welcome tempering influence that ‘conservative’ Capricorn helps Sagittarius with is in restraining its ‘holier than thou’ impulses which, given that Sagittarius is a ‘teacher’ archetype, are not always well received in ordinary social interchanges!
Offerings from the land
Last week I attended an outdoor wreath-making event at a nearby Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) property, called Three Springs Farm. To make the wreaths, we bundled up groups of branches from evergreen and bay trees that had been harvested from the farm, and accented them with berries, rose hips, privet berries, and shrubs like dodonea (hopseed bush). We then used wire or twine to attach the bundles to our circular frames, which we crafted from grape vines.
After our labors, we enjoyed a nourishing potluck by an open fire that included roasted sausages on a stick, Persian jeweled rice, and an abundance of tossed greens from the gardens. Feeling so nourished, I thought my wreath looked quite nice when I left that day, but when I returned home and hung it by my door, my discriminating Virgo eye detected a couple of gaping holes where there was clearly need for more greenery!
The land I live on doesn’t host any evergreens, but I got the idea to put some clippers in my knapsack as I headed out on a neighborhood walk, and see if I might find one out-of-the way evergreen that could spare a few branches, out of its abundance. In 25 years living here, I’ve never headed out with clippers hoping to ‘glean’ from my neighborhood, but off I went. And sure enough, early on my walk I did find a group of sturdy evergreens, not on someone’s property, but along a dirt road leading up to some houses. I clipped a few small branches, meeting my quota for ‘enoughness!’
I stopped looking for greens after that, but a while later on my walk I noticed a cardboard sign beneath a split rail fence, saying “Boughs and berries for the taking – from our land to yours!” Beside it lay an abundance of large, lush cedar boughs, and several types of bright red berry branches with leaves.
I was stunned by the synchronicity, that on my one and only ‘gleaning’ outing in my neighborhood, here were neighbors freely offering the very thing I’d been gathering! And cedar, no less, which I consider to be a sacred tree. (We planted a cedar tree, nourished with my placenta, after my daughter’s birth 28 years ago.) I recall learning when I was just about my daughter’s age that in the Indigenous lore of a SF Bay Area tribe, it is said that “cedar takes care of everything.”
While I have seen lemons and other fruits put out in my neighborhood for the taking before, never have I seen cedar boughs. I felt the hand of mystery here beside me, pointing to the fact that there is in fact abundance for the taking, if we approach with the right attitude—if we bring some Saturn along with our Jupiter!
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Full Moon/Winter Solstice Astrology
We are in a powerful vector of time, both in the seasonal and astrological year, with the holidays and solstice at hand, and as well in the cosmos itself, given that the New Moon at 27° Sagittarius is positioned in close conjunction with a gigantic black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy called, fittingly, the “galactic center” (GC). Our solar system and galaxy circle around this black hole, which radiates out multitudinous frequencies that esoteric astrologer Phillip Lindsay suggests are associated with deep wisdom and remote origins.
Astrologer Pam Younghans, in her NorthPoint Journal, shares the words of astrologer Philip Sedgwick on the effects of this center point:
The GC emits a wide array of powerful radiation, most notably infrared. This infrared energy pressures the subconscious mind, providing the release of learned behavior and memories, both negative and positive, all in the interest of moving forward. The energetic crowding process pushes out mentally/emotionally stored data, to clear space for new information to enter both the conscious and subconscious minds.
Sedgwick uses the analogy of a “defrag” process on a computer hard drive, which is undertaken to delete corrupt or obsolete data, in order that new and updated information can be introduced. This process provokes the release of old memories that block the adoption of new mindsets and habit patterns, after which we can receive a consciousness ‘update.’
I find this concept most intriguing. It absolutely syncs with the changes afoot as indicated by the outer planet aspects, which I’ve been writing about for many months now, particularly the harmonious mini-triangle formed by the three transpersonal planets, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto (the harmonious angular aspects between them helps them work together to invoke aha changes, transformations, and consciousness-changing experiences), and the Saturn-Neptune conjunction in Pisces, soon to go into Aries. Both of these configurations are described in a prior blog, towards the bottom
If that weren’t enough, we also have the rogue ‘comet’ 3I/Atlas making its closest approach to the Earth on December 18 (today!). I’d mentioned this in my Libra blog, and will restate here that comets have traditionally been taken as omens of change—whether for good or for ill— and this 3I/Atlas ‘object’ in particular is being seen by astrologers as a significant harbinger of deep transformation, offering the opportunity, in this already potent time of higher-level change, to tune in and access new levels of awareness and consciousness.
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Along with the comet and the galactic center convergence, we have some meaningful New Moon aspects in the mix as well. The Sun-Moon conjunction in Sagittarius tightly squares the sky’s ‘big news’—the Saturn-Neptune conjunction, already referenced. In short, with these two planets completing their final stay in Pisces, we are receiving our ‘last call’ to surrender to the unknowing and unravelling phase that this signature has been invoking, for the most part in Pisces, since April 2025.
We are called here to ‘get real’ (Saturn) and once and for all dissolve any lingering illusions or pretensions (Neptune) we have been dragging around about ourselves or others, and to fortify, and/or reconstruct our beliefs to suit our rapidly changing world. It’s time to get serious about the work of connecting earth and sky, of ‘ordinary’ matter and ‘extraordinary’ spirit, within our own lives and beings.
Venus, impulse towards love, harmony, and beauty, is also (widely) conjunct the New Moon and squaring Saturn-Neptune. Venus may be ‘shooting for the stars’ with her social impulses, perhaps promising more than she can deliver, but under this influence, we see the best in others, and don’t sweat the small stuff. (phew!)
We’ve also got ‘take action’ Mars in the early degrees of Capricorn, conjunct the new Moon as well. With Mars in Capricorn, we are called to be grounded and practical with our assertions and actions, and to be disciplined in how we undertake things. This serves as preparatory work for when Saturn enters Aries on February 15th. In both signatures the same two archetypes are working together, Mars/Aries and Capricorn/Saturn. This will be a strong theme for the next 2. 5 years, while Saturn stays in Aries. [More on this can be found in my upcoming book, Dance of the Archetypes, to be published next month. Details to come!]
Lastly, the New Moon is widely trine the asteroid Chiron in Aries. This too serves as a ‘warm-up’ for the longer-term Saturn in Aries assignment. Both of these signatures call us to overcome any victim narratives and claim our capacity to confidently assert our instincts and drives when so called. As well, as polarity point to accommodating Libra, Aries asks us to overcome tendencies to defer to others when making decisions or plans. When pure and centered, the Aries archetype of determined leadership passionately follows its intuitions, despite fears or hesitations. The Earth community at this time in particular needs courageous, inspired action, in all areas of life, and we each can find a role to play.
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Reach for the stars
I’ll close with some final thoughts about this archetype of the far-shooting “archer.” Sagittarius is replete with the impulse for higher meaning, gleaned either through travel to distant horizons and heights, or through pursuit of higher learning. It’s the archetype that draws people to the stars, to mountaintops, and to astrological readings (!)— to the seeking of new viewpoints, something beyond the known, hopefully a deliverance, an exhilaration, a joy.
At this time of the earth’s seasonal extreme of darkness, our culture sanctions the uplift to a ‘higher ground’, elevated by lights, music, community, and religious and pagan stories about the Light. May your journey with these energies be ble