Sol Invictus, Festivus, and Us
The solstice and the planets remind us what it means to be 'unconquered'.
What is happening?!
A series of powerful transits run through this week and color the landscape of human festivities that, though they occur on separate continents, remain thematically unified; they all mark the passage of time and acknowledge a force greater than ourselves through observation of the visible cosmos.
First up, late on December 20th (or early on December 21st, depending on your timezone) Venus moves into opposition with Uranus, which will highlight areas of strife in personal relationships as well as the collective interactions with Venus-ruled issues like femmes, prosperity, and art. We may also find ourselves at odds with a partner or experience trouble communicating, since Mercury is traipsing all over our good intentions with his retrograde in Capricorn.
December 21st will then usher in the longest night of the year for us Northern Hemisphere folks, celebrated between now and December 25th throughout various countries and cultures as the Winter Solstice, Saturnalia, Dong Zhi, Yule, St. Lucia’s Day, Christmas, and about a thousand more. (My personal favorite is Festivus, and the implications of that will become clearer as we dive into the astrology.) Less an astrological event so much as an astronomical event, the solstice is a seasonal pivot point that, historically, has major practical implications for human development. ‘Sol Invictus’ translates to “unconquered, invincible sun”, and was the ancient Roman nickname for our hugely important source of light and heat, the reliable rising and setting of which forms the basis for our daily, monthly, and yearly apportionment of time. Sol was so important that the Roman festival in its honor, ‘Dies Natalis Solis Invicti’, capped off weeks of jubilant celebrations on December 25th via copious amounts of drinking, dancing, and bonfires, serving as a drunken ‘thank you’ to the fiery orb itself for continuing to show up, day after day and year after year, allowing squishy, delicate humankind to survive another winter.
Despite the fact that we now bask in the glow of sweet innovations like indoor plumbing, electricity, and representative democracy*, what we often refer to as “The Big Dark” up on the 48th parallel invokes terrifying generational memories from the DNA in our bones - winters of starvation, dark hollows full of things with claws and teeth, and the lonely promise of raw, cold, naked survival.
During our longest night and annual mortality reconciliation, our unconquerable sun moves into Capricorn and brings with it a practical, detailed, circumspect attitude, i.e. the kind of thing we all need going into 2024. Immediately following the Capricorn ingress, Mercury gets up close and personal with Sol to form an illuminating cazimi, which is essentially a tight conjunction that massively boosts the quality and reach of our communication. Make no mistake - this is an intense week for interpersonal relationships, and with Venus and Uranus in the mix, things may get very spicy, indeed.
*Modern democracy is about as ‘representative’ as ancient Rome, so more of a plutocracy, really. But we live longer than we did under Rome’s bullshit, so…yay?
Why would this affect me?
Though we no longer rely on caves and candlelight for protection, it is still very, very dark during the official commencement of winter. With Venus and Uranus playing footsie under the table and Mercury flitting around the sun like the confounding rabble-rouser that he is, we may feel a tangible pressure to hash out old grudges or address sticking points in our relationships in a detailed, somewhat stubborn fashion, considering that Venus and Uranus are both transiting fixed signs(Scorpio and Taurus, respectively.) When we break down the major celestial players of the week it looks a bit like this:
Venus/Aphrodite/Astarte = saucy lady whose existence is predicated on her father’s emasculation
Scorpio = zodiacal detective who plays a kinky long game, unnervingly comfortable with death
Uranus/Ouronos = disruptor and god of the sky who was revenge-neutered by his son, Saturn, then at least got a daughter out of it when Saturn chucked his twigs and berries into the ocean, spawning Venus
Taurus = hedonistic and hardworking in equal measure, focused on the finer things in life and walking a path that leads to security
Mercury = zippy little messenger who ensures the constant flow of ideas, scholarship, and communication
Capricorn = methodical, reasoned, and reliable realist who acquire riches like dragons and has a secret penchant for naughtiness
Scorpio and Taurus themselves represent the gender polarity of ruler Mars, with Taurus standing in for the masculine creator opposite the more feminine, investigative work of Scorpio. So with Venus in Scorpio opposing Uranus in Taurus, it could feel like we are in the midst of a sexually tense tug-o-war wherein some of us are on the side of the archetypal femme, fighting for earthly pleasure, equality, progression, and prosperity, while others fight on the side of a more idealogical, masculine, conservative authority.
Relational and environmental tension might be turned up even further than usual, given that we are marinating on this knotty, eternal friction during a profound turning point in the human calendar, one that challenges our baseline assumption of our own significance.(Humans tend to think they’re super smart and unique as a species, but when you take away our technology, light, and heat, we expire remarkably fast.)
This tension may remain internalized in typically pedestrian ways; for instance, we might be annoyed by our partners or best friends, so we bitch about it to other people, or write angry notes in our journals, then get over it fairly quickly once a little steam is released. For people in unions lacking stable underpinnings, however, it is entirely possible for eruptions to occur that change the status of the relationship. We might also see aspects of this opposition play out collectively and publicly, as reproductive rights, bodily autonomy, and bloody international conflicts continue to dominate our discourse - discourse that will then become super-charged by Mercury during his sun-loving cazimi, amplifying our need and ability to effectively verbalize our position. It could feel like half the world turns into George Constanza’s dad during Festivus, defiantly yelling, “I’ve got a lot of problems with you people, and you’re all going to hear about it.” The way in which our airing of grievances is received will vary based on our unique interpersonal landscapes; solid foundations are less easily uprooted, but newer, flimsier structures could find themselves just as easily flattened, much like George himself in a post-dinner wrestling match with his older, angrier opponent.
When do I have to deal with this?
The evening of Wednesday 12.20.23 will see the perfection of opposition between Venus and Uranus, which we can expect to reverberate through the holidays and up to the beginning of 2024. The next day, 12.21.23, is the official solstice and ‘long night’, and on Friday, 12.22.23, Mercury tells the other planets to hold his beer while he forms an intense conjunction with Sol in Capricorn. One important aspect to remember as we wrestle with these polarities (masc v.s. femme, progress v.s. conservation, etc.) is that trickster Mercury forms this cazimi while retrograde, so we can expect Capricorn’s brutally efficient, detailed reasoning to be applied to some kind of review of our past, with Sol providing an intense spotlight and new clarity.
Cool, what does the Tarot say about this?
Today we might wrestle with our own timidity when it comes to material goals, as warned by the reversed Ace of Pentacles. It seems something from our past has made us a bit gun shy, and The Fool is urging us to release old, situational baggage and look at opportunities with fresh eyes instead of cynical ones.
On Thursday, 12.21.23, we enter Capricorn and reflect on the practicalities of surviving winter with an assist from the Elders oracle card. This is a day that begs us to reevaluate key moments from our past; to determine how we carry the enlightenment of our ancestors to the future without continuing the horror and injustice that dominate previous eras.
The 5 of Swords warns us on Friday, 12.22.23, of spicy conversations that move quickly and dominate collective attention, much like Mercury will dominate our sky as it nestles closely to the sun. For some, these difficult interactions will lead to severance and division, as evidenced by the 3 of Swords showing up for Saturday, 12.23.23. Throughout all these intense, decisive conversations, it behooves us to remember that Venus in Scorpio takes very little shit, and has no problem walking away from disingenuous people or ideas. It might be best during this year’s Festivus to hold back a little during, “The Airing of Grievances.”
Lo and behold, on Sunday, 12.24.23, we are reminded of all good things by The Sun, a card pull that figuratively presents us with a literal truth; darkness cannot exist forever, because the light always returns. This is a good day to reconnect with creative passions, recreational activities, and whichever close family members and friends we weren’t beefing with over the previous few days. By Monday, 12.25.23, sunlight continues to lengthen and strengthen, and the reversed 4 of Vessels helps us feel buoyed by our emotions instead of weighted by them. The struggles, arguments, and assessments of the previous week will have armed us with new clarity and purpose; despite an imperfect world, we can and will carve our own path through it. Our determination to endure is as reliable as the rising and setting of the sun.
Lagniappe
One point of continuity between the thousands of mid-winter festivals dotting human history and geography is the focus on light and fire. Our innate need for illumination during the darkest months is expressed in wild variations, from the candle bedecked noggins of St. Lucia’s maidens to the wine-soaked bonfires of Saturnalia and burning trees of Norse pagans, humans have always loved the power of flames.
The islands that make up the United Kingdom remained isolated throughout much of the Holy Roman Empire, which allowed secretive, druidic traditions to retain their relevance through much of the land instead of succumbing to forced dissolution at the hands of the Christians. Evidence of all this naughty pagan retention is obvious throughout Britain, a country that indulges in at least as many weird, fiery, ritualized festivals as they do varieties of tea. My new favorite is called Burning The Clocks, and it takes place in Brighton on every winter solstice. Residents and visitors spend the weeks leading up to December 21st constructing elaborate lanterns made of paper and willow, which are then illuminated and paraded through the streets amongst throngs of revelers. They gather near midnight, humans and lanterns all, to toss their creations into an enormous bonfire on the beach. The festival began as a way to release ourselves from the clutches of human constructs like time, capitalism, and institutions; to remind us that there are more powerful, primordial things driving our actions than the flimsy systems we’ve constructed in the modern era, and it’s the sort of thing that can act as a balm while we hash out the future of coexistence on this planet.
You don’t have to light a 12 foot lantern on fire to participate in ancient ritual, though - many of us will simply be lighting as many candles as possible to burn throughout the long night. People with several months or years of ritual practice under their belts might be gleefully incinerating significant, dried herbs from previous seasons as a way to release...*looks back at the last few years*…I mean, take your pick. All of it?!
The point is, ritual looks like different things to different people. Intentions for the new future, as well as anything from the past, can be written on anything - bay leaves, laurel leaves, paper scraps, or the widest part of joint. I have a practitioner friend who almost exclusively uses smokables for ritual work, and she has painstakingly written sigils and phrases on every cigarette she procures. Your desires are yours alone, and it’s up to the individual how they wish to manifest them as long as the essential goal remains focal; finding a way to begin again when the sun rises the next day, as it invariably does, over and over, ad infinitum.