Full Moon Lunar Eclipse in Capricorn Conjunct Jupiter-Pluto

To continue with the intensity of 2020, we’ve got a lunar eclipse in Capricorn today—on the 4th of July—closing out this eclipse season, which began with full moon lunar eclipse in Sagittarius on June 5th.

Think of how much the world has changed in a month. Think of how much has been brought to the surface to be reckoned with—and how much is still left to do.

On June 6th, 2020, an estimated half a million people protested the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many other Black lives at the hands of police, and the systemic killing and oppression of Black people in the United States (and around the world). We have all been forced to grapple with (for the first time or for another round) the nation’s long and continued history of anti-Black racism—and for non-Black and non-Indigenous folks, and specifically white people, with our unearned benefit and privilege in a society built and rooted in white supremacy.

Capricorn represents traditions, structures, and skeletons—the systems that underly a person and a society—that keep us together, hold us up, or hold us down. And these systems are facing a reckoning.

All of this is happening near the second Jupiter-Pluto conjunction for 2020 (Pluto = the underworld, death, rebirth and transformation, and Jupiter = growth, expansion, making things bigger).

Full Moon in Capricorn Ritual

1. Light a black candle and hold a piece of black tourmaline (protection, release, power to face fears).

2. Write out a list of everything you want to let go of in our current social environment, everything you want to change, abolish, defund, burn down. Include in this list ways in which you personally have caused harm, and systems and personal patterns through which you have harmed others.

3. Light the paper in the candle (and put it in a fire-safe container to burn). When it is finished burning, bury the ashes in the dirt stating your intention to release these things and systems and patterns and to return them to mother Earth to make anew.

4. Go online. Donate in support of Black lives. Here are some options.

Journal Writing Prompts

- What are some ways you have caused harm in your life? Think on both interpersonal and social/societal levels.

- What have you learned or been learning (and perhaps healing, though not necessarily) in the past two years about harm that you’ve been a victim of and/or inflicted?

- Where in this can you find seeds of self-compassion? Is there any space in here for self-forgiveness? If so, breathe into that space. Write into it; write about it.

- Make a list of ten things you can do this week to both reduce and counteract harm you’ve caused, whether intentionally or unintentionally. (Do these things. Check them off your list.)

Creative Writing Prompts

Capricorn rules the skeletal system, both of individual organisms and of larger systems (such as society). Think about bones: think about the base makeup of your characters, and of your world. What are the underlying structures—beliefs, rules/laws, norms, expectations, and systems your world is built upon—and your character is built of?

1. Start with your world. What larger systems and structures are at work, underpinning the fabric of society (and perhaps of the physical world itself as well—is there Earth-like gravity, for instance)? What are important social structures and groupings (government, communities, educational systems, tribes, families, etc.)? What are important rules, laws, and social norms that dictate how things are run and how things work; what is and isn’t allowed? Which structures are useful and productive; which are harmful and oppressive? You can make a list of these, and/or freewrite your thoughts in an expository way (brainstorm through writing anything you’re still unsure of, don’t worry, you don’t have to commit).

2. Now zoom in on a character. What beliefs, rules, laws, and social norms determine and/or affect their personality and personhood? Where do they belong (or not) within larger social and political structures? Where are they oppressed or constrained; where are they benefiting or privileged? Again, make lists or freewrite or both.

3. Now choose a belief, law, norm, tradition (etc.) that the character either strongly supports and resonates with (for good or ill), or vehemently opposes, flouts, or breaks.

4. Write a scene in which we get to see one/some of this character’s belief in interaction with the law/rule/structure of the world around them. Are they constrained by it, or liberated; are they battling externally or internally against it; are they finding ways to subvert it; are they even conscious of the law/norm and how it affects them or do they blindly follow? Think about externalizing this in some way, rather than having it just happen within a character’s mind/thoughts.

Bonus Part Two:

5. Write a scene in which a character either participates in, or witnesses someone else, challenging a tradition, law, societal belief or norm. What does defiance look like in your world? Protest? Revolution?

Photo by Koshu Kunii on Unsplash