The December lunation opens with Sun and Moon in alignment on the ecliptic, within four degrees of the Moon’s south node.

Opening with a solar eclipse, this powerful and busy lunation will see Venus, Mars and Mercury change signs, sees Uranus station direct midway through the lunation, and contains the twin to the opening solar eclipse, a lunar eclipse at full Moon – all this on top of the most talked of planetary conjunction of 2020, Saturn conjunct Pluto just two days after full Moon; more on the latter as we approach mid-lunation.

In fact, there’s a lot to take in here, so we’ll come back to review the key moments as the lunation progresses.

With the dark Moon eclipsing the Sun and coming into conjunction with Jupiter as it does so, when everything is taken into account the impression here might be that everything is being brought to a pitch, that massive change is imminent and that for this to happen, something’s got to give…..but while we are in the midst of this cosmic readjustment process, for that is truly what it is, we are very far from being helplessly at its mercy.

This is not all about what is happening ‘out there’. So much of the transformative energy that is at work within the world now works across any apparent divide between inner and outer worlds – the effects are deep, the releasing old memories into life to find new  meaning for example, forgotten ways resurfacing to find new forms of expression and understanding, and a release of energy from the sacred realms that has been locked up behind false notions and suppressed by regimes of spiritual ‘control  and dogma’ for millennia.

In reality, reality is adjusting out of the ‘reign of the false’ and one of the main effects of this is the restoration of a unified experience of life in which there is no divide between inner and outer, unless ‘we ourselves’ make it so. Some insist upon retaining this construct, one of the consequences being an over-reliance on ‘technology’. A restoration of the ‘integral’ nature of perception however and our ability to restructure it at will could be taken as a corrective to what has become an over-literallised notion, that ‘we create our own reality’.

An alchemical power is being released from within the matrix, that encodes the transmutative processes at work between ‘energetic and material’ states, an ancient knowledge, of a kind that is very far from being confined to the ‘Earth realms’. This is to describe one of the elements of the Saturn Pluto equation at work now, clarifying under the influence of the eclipses.

But, we came here precisely to witness this resurgence and to be present in as powerful a way as we individually can to participating in its unfoldment.

By working with the energetics of the matrix at this time, as supercharged as they may be, we have an opportunity to integrate more fully with what is potentially a massive dose of radical change within the world.

We have to ask ourselves, is the perspective of the bigger picture speaking directly to our personal self; this can be overwhelming, and many are still suffering the miasma of cultural indoctrination, social and political correctness et al which obscures and prevents this experience from becoming consciously embodied.

In the world, among the human politic, this brings the reminder that the enormity of it all ‘is’ no barrier to the powerful difference a small number of people, or just one individual can make, and there are plenty of examples of this reality being brought to bear at this time.

But ‘size’ is not the issue here, as, on the scale of things that runs from the sub-atomic to the super-galactic for example, humans stand at the centre point – small shifts at the fulcrum, balance point, can have a big impact.

In plain-speak what these times are telling us is that “while we are, each of us, a tiny and seemingly insignificant speck in the vastness of ‘all that is’, it is our ‘role’ and the qualities we bring to fulfilling it that matter”.

What this lunation can help us with in particular is to get a clearer view of what that role is and, more pertinently at the off-set, what needs to happen for us to fulfil it more completely.

First, and this applies to all, we could simply commit to stepping more deeply into the role of ‘change maker’. This is not, as the ‘new-age’ version might have it, about ‘creating our own reality’, so much as being able to participate more deeply in reality creating itself, in other words aligning ourselves with Nature’s way.

Secondly, if the events of the world around you make you doubt just how effective you can be, use this perspective to define more clearly what ‘is’ actually within your reach, and focus on that.

But, use this lunation to gain the wider perspective and to place your actions within the larger context as well…..this is all a part of the gift of these times, for everyone now living within the ‘ongoing’, should we be willing to accept it, or have eyes to see it.

So, having internal clarity is paramount.


For this clarity to come into play some things will have to be checked on and if necessary changed within ourselves, to access the necessary inner balance point; if we can fully accept that our part in change is just that, a part, but without losing sight of the potency and effectiveness we individually have, it is then this balance point that brings us, like Sun and Moon on the ecliptic, into alignment. Its being on and in Life’s ‘sweet spot’ and knowing how to flow and adjust with it.



At the outset of this lunation in particular, it is that which is ‘getting in the way’ of this inner change that is being brought to our attention and reflected in the world and, as the lunation gets under way at the solar eclipse/new Moon the opportunity arises to bring deeper than normal levels of personal awareness to these ‘facts of life’ at work within our own lives.

This is the south node effect, which shows us the residue of past actions, the, if you like, ‘karmic imprint’ which we yet labour under, and which consequentially affects our personal trajectory and behaviour on our journey through this lifetime. This may well be ancestral, we may well be here to make the deeper adjustment to the ancestral line and engage with ancestral healing.

At the same time, in keeping with the south node, it is also that which we have innate to our being, that we have brought with us as ‘powers’, knowing and skilful means into this life which is being brought to our attention here. We can in fact be very complacent about theses innate gifts, take them fore granted, and thus miss their true potential and the immense fuel they provide to us in reaching for our soul’s purpose and direction. Eliminating the blind spots to these gifts is a part of the purging process at work in this.

We have an opportunity to see ourselves in a new light here.

To take it, we must be prepared to not only accept our flaws and strive for self awareness beyond our current state, to accept unconscious aspects of ourselves as ‘ourselves’, each of us must be prepared to more fully own our power and commit to using it wisely in the world, ie acting responsibly with and upon it. The two go together.

What is blinding us here is personal not just embedded unconsciousness, it is personal bias, and what we are being blinded to is the damage our unconscious actions cause ‘when they are not in accord with the times’.

Being in accord with the times is a developed art, one that can be nurtured, and divination is one of the most powerful practices to hand for this, but which rests very much on our inner equilibrium and self knowledge.

Yes, given the state of things this current calling represents a ‘damage limitation scenario’, but it is also an expansion of awareness that is rippling through the entire matrix. The entire solar system is ripe with change and its reverberations are at work right through to the galactic core.

On a planetary scale the alignments at this solar/lunar eclipse season are shifting the centre of rotation of our solar system to an extreme and the changes we see are not merely local but are reflected across a wide bandwidth of scale and depth within our local interplanetary space. In such conditions certain ‘life rules’ and natural laws come into play.

We may well have created a great deal of the shit we are currently experiencing in the world, but, the message here is that when our ‘personal will’ ignores the collective terrain we are travelling through collisions will happen, the shit will continue to hit the fan,  and we simply cannot allow for that to happen any more. Period.

“The buck stops here.”

This could well be the theme of this lunation, and it might be enough to simply allow this to sink in and let it become integrated into our entire being, but, ‘being in sync with life’ is much more the underlying theme here, where the real ‘power’ lies. It is the power for harmonious living.

We will see the tides turning over the course of this lunar cycle, the qualities of the times shift with them and, before ending this brief synopsis of the lunation’s onset it is worth taking a look at the quarters, to make better use of their energetics in relation to our own charts and personal energetic matrix.



First quarter on January 3rd sees Mars enter Sagittarius and Mercury, having entered Capricorn, conjunct Jupiter.

Full Moon on January 10th sees Saturn closing to within 10 minutes of arc with Pluto, and Mercury transiting the Sun on the lunar eclipse. Jupiter will be transiting the Moon’s south node.

Bringing an unpredictably novel twist to the moment Uranus also comes out of retrograde motion, meaning all the planetary bodies will be in direct motion, all of which funnels through that powerful Saturn/Pluto conjunction. Uranus needs to be paid special attention now with this change to direct motion – be prepared to change direction, take opportunities as they arise, but being open to anomaly without shutting down or going into cognitive dissonance is of the highest importance.

The effects of Uranus within the Taurean field are profound enough, but this is a time when they are bring highlighted, in the run-up to the Saturn/Jupiter cycle which begins in November 2020 in particular. How we see and value the material and natural world is an obvious change that is underway, but this is not simply the product of becoming aware; it is about coming into alignment with and allowing an evolutionary change within consciousness to take hold of us.

The ‘old world’ and its ‘trappings and entrapments’ are dissolving away, their hold on us diminishing, and what is emerging in the process is both old, very old, and new, very new.

I have written about some of these effects in the two ‘Uranus in Taurus’ posts you will find in the listings here, but, I have held back from publishing part three, where these latter changes are looked into more specifically, as the changes anticipated are happening much more quickly and with stronger effect than expected – part 3 will now appear in the first quarter of the new calendar year, once Uranus has cleared its retrograde shadow.

By last quarter on 17th January Venus will have entered Pisces, the sign of her exaltation, and Mercury will have crossed into Aquarius and the message of these times will have come more clearly into perspective.

There will be an unusual twist in the tail of this lunation for sure, but, as we head past this watershed moment in time the purposefulness which we need to bring to of our personal journey will have been made much clearer, and that role may well bring more than we have been accustomed to expecting of ourselves into play…..

….the next lunation opens in the first decan of Aquarius on January 24th 2020 and puts the work and changes made during this lunation to the test – its Sabian symbol tells us that “A COUNCIL OF ANCESTORS IS SEEN IMPLEMENTING THE EFFORTS OF A YOUNG LEADER.”

The question now is, “where in the circle do you stand?”

Blessed Be!


image : Carson Ellis