RETURN OF THE LIGHT

3 min read·3 days ago

an essay by Mike Zizis

Tomorrow Saturday December 21 2024, 4:22 AM EST — the sun enters 0° Capricorn.

This signifies the return of the light in the northern hemisphere. In Hellenistic astrology, Capricorn is associated with the gateway to the heavens or heaven, that higher light reaching the earth, and the release of spirit into a higher realm. Saturn is the classic ruler of Capricorn. To the ancients this was the most distant planetary light. ‘Planeta’ in Greek means wanderer.

Saturn was associated with the coldest outer realm. Beyond Saturn was said to be the realm of mystery, where Gods and the immortals dwelled. Saturn is associated with mystics, hermits, sadus, and all those who separate from the community and family for higher joining communing with the beings of light, darkness, and the immortals.

This certainly differs from our understanding of Saturn and Capricorn, the old Devil in Saturn’s case, and Capricorn the mountain climbing goat neither at home at land or sea — climbing the mountain — doing it the hard way so to speak.

Each day until the first day of the sign of Cancer, the sun will be adding about 1° to his journey climaxing in the longest day of the year. The ascent of the light, and its victory over darkness, gradually fills the atmosphere, moving away from the shelter of home and hearth to increasing work: farm cultivation, commerce, construction, the half-created and half-destroyed city, and the jackhammer cacophony of the highway. Work continues under the ever-increasing light of the sheltering sky.

The lesser-known story of Capricorn centres around Amalthea the goat:

FROM: https://mythcrafts.com/2019/06/20/amalthea-the-goat-who-nursed-baby-zeus/

Amalthea, the she-goat who produced a never-ending supply of milk and always gave birth to twins, and who would suckle the baby Zeus and fill him with divine strength.

Amalthea was no ordinary goat, and she has a mythology all of her own. It is said that one day while playing one of her horns snapped off (depending upon who you ask it was either banged against a tree, or accidentally torn from her head by a baby Zeus who was playing with her and did not yet know his own strength). The horn was picked up by the Nymphs and ringed with herbs and filled with fruit and became what is known these days as the Cornucopia or Horn of Plenty; a non-stop bounty of sustenance that never runs out.

Up until our industrialized society, winter was seen in the northern hemisphere as a time of rest — baby Zeus and the goat are quietly protected, as his power gradually matures, in myth. So as the light returns tomorrow, we are well advised to observe the blanket of snow in this quiet world as the seeds in the ground are protected from the desiccating cruel and frigid winds. Likewise as the granaries are full so to speak, and we are provisioned, we can see this time as higher moments of contemplation, instead of a frenzy feeding of enslaving machines, for a breathy moment. So -if you will- look out your window here in our snowy realm, and inhale the miraculous hush stillness, and six pointed million star configuration of crystalline snowflakes.