On Setting Intentions for the New Moon

You can't just intention your way out of everything.

It’s a common practice within astrology to set intentions for the New Moon. I don’t actually do it that often myself, though.

There was a lot of talk on astrology social media last week about how the most recent New Moon in Saturn-ruled Capricorn, the last New Moon co-present with Pluto in Capricorn for more than 240 years, was an especially powerful time to set intentions.

What I thought was more compelling, however, was the connection between the current New Moon and the Full Moon of January 2020. As discussed in my previous post, both had the Sun at 20° Capricorn.

How many people set intentions at the Capricorn New Moon in late December 2019, or at the Aquarius New Moon in late January 2020, that completely fell apart when the COVID-19 lockdowns turned everything upside down just a couple of months later?

You can’t just intention your way out of everything. Sometimes there are bigger forces involved — and sometimes that’s a good thing.

In late 2019 and early 2020, I briefly considered going back to school to become a certified financial planner. I had recently discovered options trading and liked the idea of working with money.

When COVID-19 happened, though, I was reluctant to make the commitment of starting an academic program with the world so unstable. While waiting for things to settle down, I focused on efforts more likely to bring immediate results. In July 2020, I broke into freelance writing on Upwork, accepting a ghostwriting assignment for a small astrology website.

That November, Tarot.com reached out to me on Upwork. I hadn’t previously thought of writing daily horoscopes, but I took their test assignment and passed. I’m glad I didn’t rigidly stick to my intention of becoming a certified financial planner because becoming a daily horoscope writer wound up being a much better fit for my skills and interests.

Is 2024 a repeat of 2020?

Although January 2020’s Full Moon and January 2024’s New Moon both have the Sun at 20° Capricorn, I think the overall astrology of January 2024 is less intense than that of January 2020. This time around, the Sun is trine Uranus in Taurus, potentially giving us a chance to break out of our ruts.

I do think this is a good time to reflect on how we have changed for better and for worse over the past four years.

As I said in both Booby Prize: An Astrological Novel and Impossible Dreams: Hopes, Fears, and Expectations for Saturn in Pisces, my family is diverse in political and religious affiliation. Throughout the upheaval of COVID-19, there has actually been broad agreement that the sky is falling, in spite of disagreement surrounding who to blame.

I don’t love that I have become so burned out by overheated rhetoric on multiple sides of multiple issues that I can’t even believe a weather report anymore. I finally received the author copies of Impossible Dreams from Amazon, so I tried to schedule an in-person event to distribute copies to contributors. I just blew off the rumors of snow for this weekend. Even before COVID-19, my hometown of Eugene, Oregon, incorporated with the Moon in theatrical Leo, had a history of making more fuss than circumstances turned out to warrant regarding dramatic weather forecasts.

Well, the snow actually happened, so tomorrow’s event has been canceled for now. Stay tuned to this blog for details on a rescheduled event in Eugene, though. I have more copies of the book on hand than I have allocated to contributors, so people who want to just show up and buy a copy of Impossible Dreams for $15 (lower than Amazon’s $20+ shipping) will be able to do so.