Journaling, Tarot, Horoscopes & a Gentle Magic for Building Something That Can Hold You. All Of You.
There is a particular kind of fatigue that hits this time of year that has nothing to do with parties, social obligations or whether you remembered to stretch before bed. I didn’t because guess what, I rarely leave my bed anyway…I know…but hey, this is late-Jan Capricorn vibe for you.
It is the exhaustion of holding yourself together in a world that keeps demanding more productivity, more optimisation, more smiles, while offering very little actual safety in return. In fact, not sure if you noticed, but some 80 years on, we’re getting a second season of that tired old fascism & genocide show. Who paid for this shit? And how comes people still tune in and watch?
There’s a common lie that January should feel like a fresh start, but the reality is far more swampy. Late January is rarely a neat little jolt to the system priming us to slay the new and better year ahead.
Much like the Northern Hemisphere right now, it’s heavy and uncomfortably damp, everything feels unnecessarily muddy and gloomy, carrying a sharp, icy bite that reminds you we’re still very much in the thick of the dark months.
I feel it in my bones every January. That low hum of okay but what now. The bills still exist. The planet is on fire. The tech bros are still trying to sell us immortality subscriptions.
And yet here we are, alive, tender, still dreaming things into being.
Capricorn Season always asks a sobering question, which is oddly appropriate if you still turn to booze as a survival mechanism for the whole festive mess. Capricorns get bad rep for being detached and cold, but the truth is - rather than in a cruel way, this archetype shows up for us in a deeply adult one.
What are you building? And can it actually support you when things get heavy? Not the fantasy version of your life. The real one, with your nervous system, your bank account, your body, your grief, your joy. The way they are now, not two years from now when you got your shit together and made your parents finally proud. Spoiler alert: — umm, actually you know what, no. That would be too Capricornian of me, ha!
This New Moon is not interested in hustle culture nonsense or manifesting your way out of systemic, democratic and human rights collapse. It is interested in scaffolding. In sustainability. And as every moon, it never rises in vacuum:
Jan 17 / Venus enters Aquarius
Jan 18 / New Moon in Capricorn sextile Neptune and Saturn in Pisces, Conjunct Mars and Mercury in Capricorn and trine Uranus in Taurus
Jan 19 / Sun moves to Aquarius
Jan 20 / Mercury enters Aquarius
By the time this New Moon arrives, something has already shifted. Venus has just left Capricorn and crossed into Aquarius - and the emotional temperature changes almost immediately. It’s a switch in between two vastly distant polarities. What was being held together out of duty starts to feel optional. There is less tolerance for arrangements that rely on silence or endurance, the type of emotional martyrdom bullshit that we call maturity to feel better about our shitty choices. Desire gets a little less polite. Affection becomes more honest, sometimes abruptly so. You may notice a subtle loosening in how you relate to people, money, aesthetics, even your own values. Less what is expected. More what is true.
The New Moon itself forms in Capricorn on January 18, tightly clustered with Mars and Mercury. This matters. It gives the lunation weight and direction. There is a sense that something must be named, organised, committed to or cut away. Conversations land with consequence and actions feel binding. You are not imagining the seriousness of it.
At the same time, the New Moon is in quiet conversation with Saturn and Neptune in Pisces. That combination is subtle but important. It softens what could otherwise become harsh or purely transactional. There is an awareness here of grief, fatigue and the collective nervous system strain we are all swimming in. You may feel both more realistic and more permeable than usual. It is the ever-so-timely acknowledgement that structure without compassion becomes cruelty. And compassion without structure dissolves into emo burnout.
Uranus in Taurus adds another layer. There is an undercurrent of instability around resources, security, land and the body. Not dramatic necessarily, but persistent. If something around money, work or physical wellbeing feels unsustainable, that feeling is not anxiety talking. It is information. Take notes.
Then, very quickly, attention begins to shift. The Sun moves into Aquarius on the 19th, followed by Mercury on the 20th. The focus lifts from personal containment to broader systems. Ideas accelerate. Conversations widen. March into the streets and set your bra on fire type of inner pull.
The question quietly changes from how do I hold this together to what am I participating in and why. There’s strength in numbers, our heartfelt connections are the engine of a revolution. Power to the people! This is the beginning of a longer Aquarian build (Aquarius Stellium) that culminates later in January, which I explore more deeply in the first chapter of my 2026 astrological story arc (dive in HERE).
This New Moon is the threshold. The moment where something is set in place before the collective current really starts to move.
Taken together, this reads as a sort of orienting energy that creates a space for us to fill with choices that acknowledge both the reality of the world and your place within it. It is about responsibility, yes, and work (I know, ew), but it’s the quieter kind.
The rising of support pillars and the building of a solid stage that in turn can hold all of what you are when the curtain goes up.
The Work
Every New Moon lands somewhere specific in your chart. It activates one room, puts pressure on another and leaves a few others in shadow. That is where astrology becomes personal rather than theoretical.
Below, we will look at:
- how this Capricorn New Moon, shaped by everything unfolding around it, moves through your chart based on your Rising Sign. This is the lens through which the New Moon actually shows up in your daily life, not just in your inner monologue.
Read for your Rising Sign first. If you want a secondary layer, your Sun Sign can add context, but it is not the main event.
- After the zodiac guidance, I will take you through a five card tarot spread designed to help translate this astrological momentum into a story it tries to reveal to our subconscious.
- Following that, there is a journaling descent that works to give real world shapes to the subconscious rather than arguing with it-which is Capricorns fav leisure activity.
- Finally, I will guide you through my ‘Arrow of Compassion’ Capricorn New Moon ritual. It is practical, embodied, intentionally unspectacular. It is about facing what you carry, deciding what stays, placing something solid into the ground without hardening yourself in the process.
There is journaling. There is magick. There is dirt under the fingernails.
There is a door at the end of this paragraph, and yes, that is where the paywall lives, because the work continues more intimately on the other side.
