For All We Know—Full Moon in Gemini Moon—December 19th.
December, the diamond-frosted clasp linking twelve jewelled months to yet another year—Phyllis Nicholson.
This is the month when the Light returns on the longest, darkest day of the year.
In the black heart of winter, we may be standing at some new threshold, daring to cross a new frontier that will bring a different rhythm to a new stage of life.
December’s Full Moon invokes Gemini’s mercurial magic as we approach the Solstice on December 21st. Now as we tend to the cherished customs and familiar rituals of this holy season, it may be easy to be distracted by busyness, overwhelmed with fatigue, whiplashed by unexpected events that leave us disorientated, discombobulated, emotionally drained, yearning for soul shelter amongst those simple things that bring us comfort and joy.
This Full Moon is Mercury-ruled. And in the Greco/Roman world, Mercury/Hermes presided over thresholds, crossroads, and boundaries. As we prepare ourselves for the challenge of crossing a new threshold, we may meet the spirit of Gemini in the wind that rustles the branches of the tree outside our window, a reminder that nothing is constant. Air is Gemini’s element, and Gemini moves through its two personas, appearing in those either-or choices we feel compelled to make, sometimes showing up at crossroad moments in our lives, when we stand poised to make a life-changing decision. This is the energy of the trickster—versatile, elusive, clever, playful, and infuriatingly inconsistent. 
The cherished rituals of this season of comfort and joy assume a different cadence amidst new restrictions and mandates. This contradictory Gemini Full Moon casts her moonbeams between an ungainly quincunx to Venus and Pluto, which make the second of three conjunctions on Christmas Day, followed by the final one in early March 2022. For all we know, our plans to gather with friends and family this festive season may be suspended. What we had hoped for may not be possible this Christmas.
In myth, Venus is well practiced in dealing with Pluto’s dark, brooding presence, and their passionate union exposes any superficiality, stirs strong emotions, demands resilience and maturity. Venus is resplendent, glittering in her full regalia on the western horizon now. As you marvel at her radiance, set an intention for what you wish to manifest in your life. On the same day as this Full Moon, Venus turns Retrograde at 26° Capricorn and moves into the shadows (December 19th-January 29th).
The ancients tracked the passage of Venus in a perfect pentagram across the skies, ascribing her disappearance in the skies to her descent into the Underworld. For the ancient Sumerians, the Retrograde period of Venus was a powerful symbol of rebirth and transformation. The pre-Colombian Mayans believed that kingdoms were unstable, regimes might topple, and so her emergence signified an auspicious time to begin a war. In myth, Innana (Venus) is deprived of all her valued regalia and exquisite clothing. She enters the Underworld vulnerable and exposed, stripped bare of beauty as she surrenders to the darkness of the night.
For so many, this has been a difficult year. A year that has tested our patience, our integrity, our ability to temper our desires. We may have found ourselves in a strange landscape—a world that has changed. Friendships may have altered, truths may have shapeshifted, divisions deepened. Free floating anxiety clouds political agendas and a stealthy manoeuvring for power continues as Pluto moves through Capricorn and Saturn presses his boot heel on pleasure and possibility. Yet, for all we know, beneath the surface of our lives something is emerging, inching its way forward, as we transition into a new way of being.
As we adapt and improvise, Saturn and Uranus are still in a uneasy waning square and will meet again on December 24th (11° Aquarius) brushing the birth charts of nations and individuals in various degrees of potency all through 2022. The North Node enters Taurus on December 23rd, will form a square to Saturn on April 16th, and unite with Uranus in Taurus on July 23rd. The Solar Eclipse of April 30th squares Saturn, as does the Lunar Eclipse of November 8th, 2022.
Saturn/Uranus aspects accompany jarring change and disruption, civil unrest, radicalisation, gains or losses of freedom and human rights. In recent his-story, this cycle began in 1988, then reached a square in 1999, and opposition between 2008-2011 with the next cycle beginning in 2032. In fact, the waning Saturn-Uranus square is still with us and is the defining cosmic influence throughout the entire year ahead.
There is a quality of the absolute that lingers and settles over us that is reminiscent of the 80s. Yet this phase is different. The weight of climate emergency presses our lives.
Extreme weather sucks us into the undertow, upending what we believed was safe and sure. Increasingly autocratic right-wing governments claim the liberties we took for granted before the intense Saturn/Pluto alignment of 2020, which amplified our personal and collective shadow and unconscious complexes as we responded to the pandemic.
As the days reverse their darkness, December 21st marks the Solstice. A pale primrose Sun joins Mercury, Pluto, and Venus in cautious Capricorn, and we take refuge in those things that bring us comfort and joy. Jupiter arrives with a soft touch to the hard edges of life as he slides back into watery Pisces (December 28th-May 10th 2022) blessing us all with compassion and the profound serenity that accompanies surrender to the power of Now.
As we gaze up at the voluptuous Moon tonight whisper a prayer, send a blessing, gave thanks for the gifts and the challenges that this year has brought. We may have been forced to simplify and streamline our lives, uproot from desolate workplaces, or the cataclysmic disorder of a relationship. We are standing at a new threshold, so take a moment of quiet amidst the noise of commercial Christmas and let’s find peace in our hearts, miracles in the darkness, and an epiphany of gratitude as we send our blessings and our prayers out into the world these holy days.
My heartfelt thanks to you all for all your love and support this year.
Solstice Blessings and Much Much Love.
Ingrid.
If you would like to find out more about booking an astrology consultation for 2022 or about my forthcoming webinar events, please get in touch: ingrid@trueheartwork.com
Betrayal punctures our child-like illusions of Love, expels us from the fusion-state with the archetypal Parent, shatters the projections that cloud our vision of our partner. Infidelity pins our butterfly-winged innocence to a deep awareness of human limitation and our own un-lived psychic life. In the torrent of emotions swirls guilt, anger and despair. Betrayal leaves no room for titillation, morality or judgement. Betrayal is about passion, hot sex, erotic energy, life and death. Betrayal is about broken hearts.
In the nuclear aftermath of an affair, therapists may guide couples through various stages of atonement, stripping the soul of sex of its nuances. As sex therapist, Esther Perel, points out, we speak of “victims and perpetrators; injured parties and infidels; confession, repentance and redemption…” Dr Shirley Glass, “Godmother of infidelity research”, writes in her book, 
In Venus’s inviting arms, Mars surrenders his brutish crudeness, puts aside his weapons of war to envelop her sensuality with a solid sense of power and strength. So think of Venus dressed in Gemini clothing – communicative perhaps, playfully flirtatious, curious in the face Mars’s attractive thrust of strength and the assertiveness he now displays in fiery Sagittarius… And yet he is moving away from his lover, moving backwards into an area of the zodiac, where we must all at some time or another confront issues of our deepest longings, our deepest repressions and frozen fears. In Scorpio we confront our shadow. With Mars in this area of the zodiac, we may feel brave enough to take action, to lean in, to draw our vitality from the deep well of sexual energy, bringing our creative offspring to life in the form of new ideas that come to the surface, new initiatives that are there but may not be quite ready to be birthed until Mars moves direct again on June 30th.
Betrayal is the means through which our fantasies are punctured and recognised. Venus-Saturn and Venus-Chiron – and in Beyoncé’s birth chart a Venus-Pluto conjunction – do not cause a person to be drawn into triangles, but they describe a deep and innate awareness of human limitation. In childhood a distant or unavailable parent will then unconsciously be attributed to our own unloveability because a rival will take them away. And yet it is the depths of our pain that we discover hidden treasure in the dark silence of renewal. An affair becomes the crucible where we burn away stagnation and destroy our false selves. Our recovery and healing thrust us back into a more authentic life.