On Time Expansion at the Winter Solstice
The Liminal Space we're in between now and the end of 2023
If you feel like everything and nothing is happening right now — as if we’re in an extended loop of Everything Everywhere All At Once and time is simultaneously standing still and racing forward — you’re not alone. This is partly a Mercury Retrograde phenomenon and partly a “living at the end of the world” thing.
Trauma warps the sense of time in our brains and bodies, especially ongoing, relentless trauma. The war has only gone on for a little more than 2 months, yet on some days it feels like we’ve spent 2000 years in a crucible of crisis. Something has cracked the mundanity of the collective consciousness, and it feels very much like we’ll never be the same. This makes some sense given the layover between Pluto in Capricorn and Aquarius we’re currently on the precipice of. It is a liminal space embedded in the fabric of another liminal space. Most people are telling me that all they want to do right now is nap.
The extreme horrors of just the fourth quarter of 2023, arriving in concert with the early fall eclipses, seem to have mindwiped the previous horrors of the year. The environmental disasters, from floods, fires, tornadoes, and wildfire smoke blanketing huge swaths of the US for weeks and weeks over the summer — happened not that long ago. All the mass shootings — they’re ongoing. The book bannings. The vicious assaults on our bodies and sovereign sexualities. The attacks on democracy. The cruelty remains the point and it’s getting more pointed by the second.
The fascism some of us have actively feared and fought since 2015 is currently as loud as it’s ever been, with Hitlerian invocations about “poisoning the blood” of America from TFG lingering in the news cycle for only 24 hours before it’s lost in a tsunami of other news that may, in fact, be worse. We’re in an era of disintegration and revolution, and it’s ever harder to feel safe and grounded in our bodies.
There is a sense that the other world Arundhati Roy told us is possible is being built, but when the foundation of the previous world is ripped away from under our feet simultaneously, it can be hard to keep putting those bricks in place. This is a metaphor brought to you by Pluto at 29 degrees of Capricorn and Saturn in early Pisces.
Right now, all there is only this moment. That’s the simple wisdom of the Winter Solstice. There is only the current breath, so we must love that breath. We are watching in real-time as people’s lives are stolen in an instant, their buildings turned to dust by bombs, their children or fathers or mothers or lovers taken away by an armed kidnapper or gunman in a store or classroom, their memories washed away by a climate change-fueled 1000-year-flood.
We can enter the Winter Solstice as both a portal and a time capsule, a short day and long, cold night during which we can ritualize our relationship to the concept of time. How much of it we have, how precious it is, how much it means to waste the little we’re given. Here’s a piece I wrote early in the pandemic offering some nourishing rituals that pair well with the solstice.
The Winter Solstice welcomes us to Capricorn season, where Saturn, the ruler of time, is in command. There can be a temptation to sleepwalk through the first week of this most serious of astro-seasons, as capitalism dictates this as one of our one-and-only allowed respites from the grind. When we have to race to find something that feels like fun, instead of living in a world of daily joy and pleasure, vacations are just opportunities for stress to grip our cells and refuse to let go. That old “I need a vacation from my vacation” trope may haunt our Christmas/Kwanzaa/New Year’s holiday plans.
Saturn might suggest that we can expand time by planning better, by filling our new 2024 calendars with appointments instead of leaving blank spaces to be filled by what may come. That can be solid advice for a Capricorn season without caveats, but this one has A LOT of caveats. During a Mercury Retrograde that began in Capricorn and will return to Sagittarius on Christmas Eve, we cannot force control over anything, especially time.
If you feel tired, confused, out of it, overwhelmed, unsure of what to do with your next moment or your entire life, just sit with it. Don’t feel like you have to rush to an answer, because in all likelihood that answer will be wrong. After Jupiter stations direct on the 30th and Mercury follows on the 1st, clarity will begin to creep in.
The Winter Solstice is this Thursday, December 21st. The Sun enters Capricorn at 10:27 pm ET that night. The days after this unfold with deep emotion, confusion, and possible aggression. My December forecast has those details.
For 2024, I’m expanding some of my Substack offerings without increasing prices. You can read more about these offerings here. I am working on your January forecast and your 2024 extended forecast, which I will post between Christmas and New Year’s Day. I’m also starting a new monthly forecast for my friends at WELL+GOOD, and I’ll post a link to that when it’s up.
My book, Sex and Your Stars: A Sexologist’s Guide to the Erotic Energy of the Zodiac, comes out this summer — and it’s available for pre-order right now. Want a 20 percent discount on my readings? Show me the receipt for your order and I’ll hook you up!