I’ve been trying to spend more time outside recently. Not because the weather is particularly warm and sunny (I’m Canadian after all), but I find it reassuring to see the Sun. I live in a part of the world where, if you are working an eight AM to four PM job at this time of year, you will arrive at work roughly half an hour before the sun rises and you will leave about half an hour before it sets.
This, as you can imagine, is sort of a drag.
***
There is this perception that Sagittarius is sort of a bright happy bouncing ball of a Sign, and that once the Zodiac is done having fun, Capricorn kicks in and all of a sudden it’s all business and regulations and pinstriped suits.
As a very general cliché, there may be some truth to that. But Winston Churchill was a Sagittarius who was famously depressed, and I’ve known more than one cheerful and optimistic Capricorn in my time. Clichés only go so far, and they often break down when you look at any one given individual.
I am a Sagittarius, but recently the Jupiter Neptune square has started grinding away on my natal Saturn. And today Mercury joined Jupiter in that square, and today the transiting Moon is opposite my Sun and transiting Mars is square my Sun.
So today I had been having a particularly intense round of that feeling that “The Universe is taking a dump on me, and everything sucks.” You know that feeling.
This, as you can imagine, is sort of a drag.
***
When I’m outside I like to talk to the urban wildlife here. My neighborhood is particularly blessed with it. We get squirrels and jackrabbits and birds. Jackrabbits are too skittish to stop and interact with you much, and squirrels mostly don’t care except that every once in awhile one of them will go sort of crazy and start chattering at you like you’re the enemy. As for the birds: frankly, sparrows are kind of stupid. If you want real intelligent conversation in my neighborhood with the wildlife, you talk to the crows and the magpies.
I was outside today, and as previously described I was feeling pretty bad about myself. There is a mating pair of magpies the frequently hangs around here. Well, I assume they’re a mating pair… they certainly seem to like hanging out together. One of them landed on the roof above my head, and spent longer than usual regarding me. As always, I made sure to say hello to him. And — at the moment the Sun entered Capricorn, when I was feeling at my darkest —
…The magpie looked at me and said, quite clearly, “Hello.”
***
I’ve never had the compulsion to give names to any of the regular animals in my neighborhood. But from now on I’m calling this one particular magpie “Capricorn.” To me he is (like any decent Capricorn) a reminder that sometimes putting your head down and plowing through life’s suffering can get you through to the other side, and things will be better there.
Consider this in the next thirty days as Capricorn season progresses and the Sun passes over Saturn and then Pluto.
Hello, Capricorn. It’s good to be alive to see you.
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