New Moon In Capricorn and Tristitia
When our suffering feels claustrophobic
As I sit with this debilitated new moon in Capricorn ruled by Saturn in Pisces 1 and situated at the bending of the nodes (and poised to sit smack dab on top of my own natal moon and mercury for a little splash of added potency!), I keep thinking of one of the 16 figures of geomancy: Tristitia, translated to Sorrow, a figure ruled by airy Saturn. This is a figure representative of suffering, namely the suffering of trapping oneself inside of a solipsistic mental cage of anxiety. This is not a figure-or a lunation- that seeks to point out that suffering is illusory or can be easily overcome by turning one’s attention away. Far from it. Rather, it seeks to break us out of the grave we dig for ourselves (Dr. Alexander Cummins calls this figure “An Open Grave” often) when we think our suffering only exists in the vacuum of our own thoughts or our individual lives.
In thinking about this lunation and the figure of Tristitia, I’m reminded of a dream I had recently: I was inhabiting the body, emotional space, and psyche of my 17-year-old self. I was crying, walking around in a big busy city with a giant lead box around me. I was in so much pain. As I kept walking, brimming with anger and sorrow, I realized that I could see through the grey, leaden box, but was stuck inside of it. I had a moment of bird’s-eye lucidity in the dream as my present Self took over: I watched my 17-year-old self inside of the lead box and realized that all of the deeply turbulent emotional intensity I felt when I was a teenager revolved around the core sense that my suffering inherently cut me off or alienated me from the rest of the world. Tristitia is that same lead box we construct around ourselves when we function under the belief that our heaviest pain is ours alone to hold, that our suffering and anxiety isolates us instead of connecting us.
Many of us are not strangers to the heart-pounding, tunnel-vision inducing rattlings of the nervous system called trauma that lives through bodies, through lineages, and undoubtedly travels dormantly with us in our cells even once we have worked to integrate it into our psyche. It lives in the earth and its creatures, in plants and animals- our traumas and the responses they may trigger in us are so much larger than our individual bodies, and still they make our worlds feel so small. We suffocate inside of our own suffering when we refuse to connect it to the suffering of others and to that of the world we inhabit. However, our worlds may crack open a bit more and let a bit of fresh air in every time we hold moments of mundane suffering or stress as real in our lives and our personal contexts while remembering that these feelings and sensations are not unique to us as individuals. We may push through the leaden walls of claustrophobic cyclical thought patterns every time we situate our personal suffering in greater contexts of collective suffering, feeling the expansive connectivity of the currents of emotion and grief that hold our earth together instead of rendering ourselves sedentary and confined to the dark, shallow holes dug by worry.
Ultimately, the decanic metaphors contained within the sign of Capricorn hinge upon the realization that the Great Work cannot and will not be done alone, even if we do choose solitude. In the spirit of this lunation being ruled by Saturn in Pisces 1, take heart knowing that escaping the leaden labyrinth relies on following a thread placed there deliberately by someone who knows the same hidden rules as you do.
Thanks for reading this quick lunar transmission- I hope you’re able to find some comfort and momentum in the midst of this intense season of Saturn. I’ve been trying to find ways to write about suffering and our notions of it in relation to witnessing the struggle for Palestinian liberation and the genocide of the Palestinian people, and ultimately hope to find ways to address my thoughts on the subject that don’t feel “silly.” I’m also pretty deep in study-mode at this time, and am hitting the books particularly hard while I firm up my astrological practice and integrate new techniques- additionally, I’m falling head-first down the geomancy rabbit hole and hope to bring my newfound passion for the medieval art of divining from the earth into my writing and client practice more and more. I’m looking forward to finding time this winter to write more dispatches from the Abyss, but in case I don’t, keep up with me via the dreaded website at @abyssalastro and I’ll see you in the spring!