Moonteachings, by Dana Gerhardt - from Mooncircles.com

Capricorn's Blessing: It's Time to Regain Your Balance
by Dana Gerhardt

Think of a solitary mountain goat, deftly leaping from stone to stone, in the high altitudes, while below, lies the vast snowy theater of the world. This month you're the goat. And your life is the breath-taking, intricate, and treacherous mountain. Your focus? Keeping your balance, of course! According to the Austrian philosopher-clairvoyant Rudolf Steiner, balance is the psycho-physical sense we must develop in Capricorn. When we steady ourselves, we steady the world. If we slip and free fall, the world goes spinning. What you do this season may determine your footing for the entire year.

Capricorn is a climber, inspired by high goals. But nothing is gained without first achieving balance on the immediate terrain. This may be the underlying origin of New Year's resolutions-though it's easy to hate this tradition. Too often resolutions result from a quick slurp of Capricorn's draught. Made hastily, emotionally, preposterously, they're often the set-up for failure and disappointment. I've heard the most successful resolutions are not made on New Year's Eve. Rather they evolve over time, developing from a commitment that's internally strong and externally well-planned. This Capricorn Moon cycle favors a longer process of regaining your balance, not just a one-time declaration.

This is the season to ask yourself: What do I need to do? What do I need to un-do? Where do I need to go? How can I best steady myself for accomplishment this whole year? Of course, you can drive yourself nuts with questions like this! Better to seek the counsel of elders, wise friends or trusted mentors. (And be ready when friends and students seek such counsel from you!) We have a hunger to hear from Saturn at this time of year. He's the archetypal Wise One who rules this season's zodiac sign. If he hasn't visited you yet, you may hear from him during the following meditation on Saturn.

The Wisdom of Saturn
By Pythia Peay

The key to understanding the myth of Capricorn lies in its planetary ruler, Saturn. I like to think of Saturn as the legendary Wizard of lore: Tall, old, grizzled, white-haired, with penetrating eyes that can see through to the core of life itself. Think Merlin, Gandalf, or Moira, the Greek Goddess of Fate. Saturn in this aspect as sage magician is skilled in the time wisdom of cycles, phases, endings, beginnings, ups, and downs. How does Saturn do this? Through patience - the quality that is learned as we mature from impulsive youthfulness to mature adult. Saturn is master of time because Saturn is master of patience: The wizardry of Capricornian magic is attained by standing outside time, eternally centered in the consciousness of what really matters - rather than being pulled off one's path by the distractions of everyday life like restless mice in search of crumbs. Saturn succeeds where others fail because the old Wizard knows how to wait. Anyone who has endured a Saturn transit, for example, knows the hard lessons learned that come from enduring limitation, frustation, and delay: in other words, the discipline that comes from delayed gratification.

"In your patience is your wisdom," goes an old alchemical saying. "Haste is of the devil," is yet another. What otherworldly dreams we have the patience to wait and work for, we will one day see manifest in mundane reality. So this New Moon, take time to pay a visit to old Saturn's cave for a lesson in the magic of time. Imagine that you have drawn Saturn's hooded mantle about yourself. Withdraw from the harried demands of your life into the depths of Capricornian solitude. Climb the mountain peak that lies shrouded in mists far above and beyond the affairs of humanity. Take refuge at the feet of the old Wizard whose eyes convey a knowledge far beyond your own. Go deep into the Goddess' wisdom that says that all things that are born, must die, and will be reborn once again. The sun that rises, also sets. The dark moon empties, then waxes bright and full. The tide that rises falls back into the waiting arms of the sea.

In the cave with Saturn, gather your seeds - your ideals, goals, hopes, dreams, and fantasies for the future. Design the garden of your life: what flowers will bloom, what trees will grow? Commit yourself to their cultivation, despite the vagaries of good or bad weather. Then, gifted with Saturn's staff of patience, steadiness, and discipline, climb down from the mountain and go back out into the world: Mistress of magic and the secrets of time.