2022 is starting slow. We have been facing a watershed in how we live personally and collectively and perhaps are still reeling from the shock of our experience in the last two years, ongoing. It might be a cliche that adversity is a great teacher but it’s often true; for it stretches us beyond what’s familiar or comfortable. And when we are uncomfortable, we are pushed to grow. When times are tough what do you rely on? Yourself, your inner strengths and resourcefulness; your loved ones; your bank account; your spiritual connection; all of them? This year’s trends into mid 2023 bring this question into focus.
Now, even though it might not seem so, we hold the keys to a new phase. It involves the question: What values are you building your life from? I use the word ‘building’ wisely here, as it brings focus to the zodiac sign Capricorn – the sign of the wise elder, whose symbol, the goat with a fish tail, spans every realm of life, from the deep ocean bed to the rocky mountain-top. Capricorn is the sign where major change has been playing out since 2008 – a deconstruction of our global systems and structures that is ongoing into 2024 and beyond. Its shadow reflects all that is falling apart in our world – ambition and self-serving achievement, blind use of resources, patriarchal systems, capitalism and corporatism. As we move into this new year, we are still in this deconstructive phase yet we also have the opportunity to really step onto a bridge towards the new.
The finer frequencies of Capricorn express as maturity and integrity in contributing to the wellbeing of those we are responsible for, whether that is our family, community or collective. Perhaps you see these qualities emerging in yourself, even in your world? Certainly there is a grassroots movement swelling towards a different way of living that supports our lives and our Earth in new ways, even despite our despair at the seeming impossibility of the task. Within this framework, three further zodiac signs have a strong focus in particular this year – soulful Pisces, earthy Taurus and deep Scorpio (more to come on Pisces placements in the spring, with the activation of some profound opportunities)
Whatever your zodiac sign, Taurus has been increasingly on our radar since 2018/19 when the Awakener planet Uranus entered this fixed earth sign. Fixed earth is the most stable of all zodiac signs. It is where we find stability, security and comfort for our body and in our physical life. It represents the physical and sensual world: our resources, money and possessions, good food, pleasure, affluence, and nature’s abundance. As electric Uranus, the planet of change and higher frequency embodiment, has been traversing Taurus, we have been called to explore and discover exactly what is stable in a changing challenging world. Collectively this points towards our environmental crises, awakening to a conscious relationship with our Earth. During this period, we have been encouraged, perhaps forced, to change our old values for more enlightened flexible ones, to move from what’s of ‘value to me’ towards what is needed for us all. This year the energies of Taurus come under a broader spotlight, as the North Node of the Moon enters Taurus on 18th January and remains there for the next 18 months.
The North Node of the Moon is a point in the zodiac wheel where we are invited to evolve. It is always polarised by the South Node – a place of karma i.e. unfinished business, that we are invited to grow beyond. Together the North and South Node form a polarity that moves us from one set of values and creative expression to another. This focus is both personal and collective, with the nodal placement dictating the eclipses over the same period. Eclipses represent ending and beginning points, watershed experience, that can shock or confront us, to move us on. The South Node placement in Scorpio is the polarity point to Taurus. It’s where we experience both deeply intimate connection and where we feel most vulnerable through the triggering of our shadow energies. It’s where and how we experience discomfort through change. Scorpio represents the mystery of life contained within birth, sexual union and death. It rules the ‘taboo’ and hidden aspects of life, the things we find it uncomfortable to talk about perhaps, or even acknowledge – sexuality, jealousy and revenge, money, the processes of death, both psychological and physical.
The ingress of the nodes into Taurus and Scorpio is important. It will activate completely different areas of our lives. What was a strong focus in the past 18 months, when the Nodes were in Gemini and Sagittarius – how we receive, process and express information, travel, education and laws, misinformation and lies, a focus on ‘science’ and ‘facts’ – will now take a back seat. New themes will emerge. Let’s look at the major ones.
- Collectively – the environment, animals and nature, food production and healthy natural systems, financial systems, stability and change, grassroots movements
- What’s mine; what’s ours? – values, finance, possessions, investments.
- What is true wealth? – particularly when what we believe to be security is stripped away
- Simplicity versus complexity or intensity – a rebuilding of our lives from new core values.
- Keeping life simple – what is needed right here, right now
- Slowing down, smelling the roses – patience – yet also acting with spontaneity when life calls for it
- What can I rely on? Holding space for oneself when life is intensely complex
- How we feed ourselves on every level, sources of nourishment for body, mind, soul – pleasure, play, food, nature
- Nature as a mirror; the earth cycles and processes as our guide, in particular the composting process as a source of fertility for a new cycle of growth
- Your relationship with your body, transforming stuck energy or trauma in the body
- Mainstream revival of shamanism & tribal wisdom, along with new energy/body practices
- Self love – Self honesty or revelation as opposed to ‘I’m comfortable’, or immoveable
- Sensuality & sexuality – how we connect in intimacy or not
Exploring this new phase from the higher frequency possibilities of Taurus and Scorpio energies, the subtleties of our self-connection and intimacy with others is heightened and calling for conscious sensitivity. We are invited to let old motivations, agendas and energetic manipulation fall away to reveal the true power of attraction from the principle of ‘like attracts like.’ Taurus being ruled by Goddess of Love, Venus (also starting a new cycle in Capricorn as Morning Star as I write) represents creative potency that naturally attracts what is needed or desired through receptive magnetism. It’s easily demonstrated by the receptive nature of a woman’s body, particularly within the vagina, that draws a man into her body in lovemaking. The energy of Venus in us invites, attracts and receives new forms of creative potential to herself through the embodiment of new frequency.
To draw in and embody finer frequency with these two fixed signs, we are called to face, embrace and let go our energetic holding. With Taurus that can be holding attachment to what we possess that seems to give us security or comfort. With Scorpio that can be reflected through where we hold (emotionally and physically) old wounding, secrets, shame and sexual trauma. Taurus and Scorpio as fixed signs, reflect the challenge of ‘what I resist persists’. The synergy of the two invites us to recognise our own human nature through all the expressions of the natural world – to allow the messy complexity of being human, to receive the soothing balm of love, to know we are worthy and that life blesses us daily with natural abundance, to become more sensitive to right timing with our creative potentials.
As we raise our own frequency through the shadows of unlove and body disconnection, so we may attract that which we most desire to receive from another and engage life with true great-fullness for its constant support of our needs. Both Taurus and Scorpio are deeply resourceful signs but in different ways. Taurus represents our relationship to our body (whether we are consciously embodying it or living from our heads) to the Earth with its constant abundance and to our responsibility for caretaking its resources. Scorpio represents transforming our deep shadows to grow integrity through emotional honesty. With Uranus in Taurus with the North Node as a catalyst for conscious embodiment, the potential over the next 18 months is a discovery of treasure concealed deep within the darkest shadows of our humanness. Just like we find gold and gems hidden in the depths of the earth. The first promise of this shift emerges in mid-February, when the Divine Lover planets, Venus and Mars connect in Capricorn. Here we receive clues to acting on the new values and frequencies of creative expression tentatively emerging now. The potential over the entire period is living from deeper embodied wisdom that imbues everything we touch with conscious participation.
