Winter Solstice Yule New Moon

I’m sitting on my couch, cats in my lap, typing away on my iPad while the snow falls quietly outside. It’s been cold but today feels like Winter has finally arrived. I think we are in for a cold, snowy season here in the Mid-Atlantic, and I’m hopeful that it will be a time to rest, recalibrate and prepare. 2025 felt like this unstable whirlwind in many ways, and to be honest I’m still catching my breath from the constant sprints and stops. The year is almost over, and I’m still not sure how it managed to feel incredibly long and strangely fast at the same time. 2025 didn’t just pass, it worked on people. Things shifted in ways that weren’t always obvious in the moment but became impossible to ignore as the year went on. Relationships changed. Priorities changed. The stories we told ourselves about who we are and where we’re headed didn’t all survive intact. I don’t know anyone who came through this year without feeling altered by it in some way. Most of us are probably ready for 2026, or at least ready to stop carrying pieces of this year out of habit, comfort, or obligation. The final New Moon of 2025 arrives around December 19th right as we move into the Winter Solstice weekend, and it feels like a natural stopping point. Not a reset and not a clean slate, but a moment where something finishes and asks to be acknowledged before we move on.

This New Moon falls in Sagittarius, and instead of pushing us to hurry forward or reinvent ourselves, it asks us to slow down and actually look at the year we just lived. Not through the lens of what we hoped would happen, but through what really did. What changed us. What fell away. What we’re tired of carrying. What, unexpectedly, still feels worth keeping. It’s less about setting intentions and more about being honest with ourselves about where we’re standing right now.

New Moon in Sagittarius

Sagittarius is the sign of the explorer and the seeker, focused on meaning, belief, and direction rather than control. Its symbol, the archer, captures that tension clearly. You choose where you aim, but once the arrow leaves your hands, you don’t get to dictate how it lands. Life intervenes. Circumstances shift. Outcomes rarely look exactly like the plan. Sagittarius understands that choosing a direction still matters, even when the path takes turns you didn’t anticipate. Sagittarius energy stays curious and open-minded. It’s willing to learn, revise, and adapt rather than lock itself into a single narrative. As a mutable fire sign, it helps energy move forward, carrying lessons from one chapter into the next instead of clinging to what has already passed. In its shadow, that openness can harden into certainty, using “truth” to avoid complexity or mistaking constant motion for real growth.

Jupiter is the ruling planet of Sagittarius, and understanding Jupiter helps clarify what this New Moon is really asking of us. Jupiter represents growth, expansion, meaning, and perspective. It governs how we make sense of our lives, how we understand the world around us, and how we decide what is worth believing in. Where some planets focus on survival, emotion, or logic, Jupiter works at a wider altitude. It is concerned with truth, purpose, and the larger story we are living inside. As Sagittarius’ ruler, Jupiter gives this sign its orientation toward seeking rather than controlling. Sagittarius energy wants to explore, learn, and stretch beyond what is familiar. That can show up through travel, education, or new experiences, but more often it shows up as an internal hunger for understanding. Sagittarius wants to know why things are the way they are and what meaning they hold over time.

Jupiter expands whatever it touches, and expansion is not always easy or comfortable. Growth can bring opportunity and optimism, but it can also bring excess, overconfidence, or the temptation to cling too tightly to a single belief. Under Jupiter’s influence, we may feel certain we have the answer before we have fully lived the question. This is part of Sagittarius’ shadow, where faith becomes certainty and curiosity gives way to conviction. Under a Sagittarius New Moon, Jupiter’s role is not about luck or instant breakthroughs. It is about reorienting ourselves toward truth, purpose, and growth that feels aligned with who we are becoming. Jupiter invites us to widen our perspective, stay open to learning, and choose beliefs that help us grow rather than limit us. In that sense, this New Moon is less about expansion for its own sake and more about choosing a direction that still feels honest once the initial excitement fades.

At its core, Sagittarius is about orientation. It doesn’t just ask what’s happening, but what it means for who we’re becoming. Under this New Moon, those questions tend to surface whether we go looking for them or not. Beliefs that once helped us navigate the world can start to feel restrictive, not because we did something wrong, but because we’ve outgrown them. This New Moon doesn’t demand answers or action. It offers a moment of recognition, a chance to be honest about what this year asked of us and how it changed us. Under Sagittarius, that kind of honesty creates space rather than shutting doors.

At the same time, this New Moon isn’t only about reflection. There’s a strong emphasis right now on vision meeting reality, not as fantasy or escapism, but as something we’re willing to live inside. The astrology around this New Moon supports imagination, future-thinking, and possibility, but it also insists on integrity. This isn’t about dreaming from a distance. It’s about asking which visions are sturdy enough to be carried into real life, into the body, into daily choices and long-term commitments.

Sagittarius invites us to ask what we believe and what gives our lives meaning, but the larger sky is clear that those answers can’t stay theoretical. What are you actually willing to devote energy to now. What truths are you prepared to stand behind when things get uncomfortable or inconvenient. This New Moon doesn’t promise ease, but it does support clarity. It helps separate dreams we use to escape from dreams we’re willing to work for, tend to, and build over time.

The Bigger Astrological Picture

This threshold doesn’t exist in isolation. It’s unfolding within a larger set of planetary shifts that began building in 2024 and will continue through 2026 and beyond. Pluto’s move into Aquarius is part of that, signaling a deep, long-term change in how power, technology, community, and collective identity are organized, not all at once, but slowly and irrevocably. At the same time, Neptune and Saturn are moving through a transition between Pisces and Aries, and then there is Uranus, which retrograded back into Taurus this November and stays there until late April 2026 before finally settling into Gemini, where it will remain until 2033. These outer planets take years to transit, so their impact tends to be generational, and we’re seeing a lot of major shifts in the collective right now. When that many outer planetary transits and retrogrades happen at once, foundational cycles start turning together. The effect is cumulative. The frameworks we relied on stop feeling reliable before the new ones are fully formed, and that can leave people feeling tired, restless, or vaguely unsettled without a clear reason why.

That underlying instability is part of what so many people are responding to right now. It’s not that everything is falling apart, but that the story we’ve been standing inside is changing shape, and our nervous systems haven’t fully caught up yet. Astrology is a really helpful tool for understanding ourselves and the world better, and it makes sense that with so many major shifts happening in the farthest reaches of our solar system, there are bound to be impacts in our lives that help shape the future. When they all unfold within a few months or years of each other, it can feel like a pretty big shakeup, like a roller coaster you weren’t quite prepared for with all the twists and turns. Belief systems, cultural priorities, and even our sense of time and direction are being reorganized in the background. When you’re living inside that kind of transition, it’s normal to feel unmoored, uncertain, or like you’re constantly recalibrating. Not because something is wrong, but because the old reference points no longer hold the same weight, and the next chapter hasn’t fully taken form yet.

The Longest Night and the Slow Return of the Sun

Just days after the New Moon, the Winter Solstice arrives, long celebrated as Yule, marking the longest night of the year. Yule honors the reality that life continues even in the harshest conditions. Ancient people understood that after the longest night, daylight would begin to slowly and steadily return, and that knowledge alone was enough to keep going. For many, Yule marked the return of the light. People held hope that the sun would eventually reclaim its strength after the long, bitter cold darkness.

Yule was about survival through the most demanding stretch of Winter, especially for people in northern climates where cold, hunger, and isolation were constant threats. Evergreens were brought indoors as reminders that life persists even when everything appears lifeless or stripped bare. In Germanic cultures, families brought in large fallen logs to burn slowly, giving rise to the Yule Log tradition. These fires provided warmth and light over several days, and in some traditions, the embers were believed to carry wishes or protection into the new year. Life was hard, and survival wasn’t guaranteed. Illness, exposure, hunger, or violence could end a life quickly. People had to be practical, but they also had to believe the effort and hope mattered. The Solstice was a time to honor even the darkest season, trusting that light and warmth would eventually return.

The Winter Solstice also marks the Sun’s entry into Capricorn and with it, a shift in the kind of energy we’re working with. Where Sagittarius seeks meaning and understanding, Capricorn asks what we’re willing to build from what we’ve learned. This is the archetype of the Builder and the Elder, focused on responsibility, endurance, and long-term sustainability. Capricorn energy isn’t about rushing or forcing outcomes, but about choosing what matters enough to commit to over time and tending it with patience and care. As the light begins its gradual return after the longest night, the Solstice initiates a season of grounding insight into form, translating meaning into structure, and beginning the slow, steady work of carrying truth into daily life.

Goodbye Wood Snake, Hello Fire Horse

In the Chinese zodiac, 2025 is the Year of the Wood Snake, associated with shedding, discernment, and slow, intelligent transformation. That influence has been about learning when to bend, when to let go, and when persistence quietly outlasts force. As this year closes, that slower, inward energy gives way to something very different. The Fire Horse arrives with the Lunar New Year in February 2026, so we still have a few weeks of Snake shedding energy lingering into 2026. Fire in Chinese cosmology is yang, expressive, activating, and outward-moving. The Horse is associated with momentum, independence, courage, and the urge toward freedom. Together, Fire Horse energy is fast, visible, and difficult to contain. Where the Snake sheds in silence, the Horse moves in the open. Where Wood adapts gradually, Fire ignites quickly. This shift doesn’t erase what we learned in 2025, but it changes how those lessons want to be lived. The coming year favors action, self-direction, and movement that’s hard to postpone once it begins.

In numerology, 2025 carries the energy of completion and culmination and is associated with the number 9 (2+0+2+5=9). A nine year asks us to finish cycles rather than force ourselves into new ones. That’s made this year feel like a series of endings that didn’t always come with clean explanations or immediate replacements. Something I heard a lot of this year when people took the time to stop was boredom, fear, confusion. And that’s the point. It’s ok to be bored, for things to not go exactly as planned and for people to learn to pivot and adapt. Many people found themselves letting go not because they planned to, but because holding on simply stopped making sense. Relationships, identities, ambitions, and assumptions fell away quietly, often without ceremony or even conscious awareness. This New Moon arrives as a kind of reckoning within that process. It doesn’t resolve the uncertainty, but it confirms that the shedding was real and that it mattered. You aren’t starting from nothing. You’re starting from what remains.

Numerologically, 2026 marks a Year of One beginning on January 1st, initiating a new cycle. Where nine completes, one initiates. Combined with the Fire Horse influence that follows in February, the energy ahead becomes more visible, more catalytic, and harder to contain. This New Moon doesn’t release that momentum yet, but it helps prepare us for it. It’s the pause before things speed up, a chance to steady ourselves before the pace changes.

Standing at the Crossroads

We rarely recognize turning points while we’re living inside them. Instead, we experience them as confusion, grief, excitement, fatigue, and the strange sensation of standing between worlds. This New Moon and Solstice don’t offer resolution. They offer orientation. They remind us that something has ended, even if we can’t yet name what replaces it. They invite us to pause, take stock of what’s been shed, and begin the slower work of grounding what remains. Not rushing ahead. Not clinging to what’s gone. Just standing consciously at the threshold.

I like to think of seasons like inhale and exhale, with the peak inhale at the Summer Solstice and the low exhale on the Winter Solstice. So in that spirit, this final exhale of 2025 is a moment to recalibrate before the next cycle begins and we start drawing in deliberate breath for the following year. We’re not out of the woods, but we’re no longer disoriented by the terrain. The last few years have prepared us for many difficult challenges. The changes are real, and so is our growing capacity to meet them. This is a time to decide what no longer belongs with us and what does. Not from fear or obligation, but from honesty. From a clearer sense of where we fit, what we value, and what kind of life we’re actually willing to build. The future isn’t fixed, but it isn’t random either. As we stand here, we’re shaping it through attention, choice, and discernment. The path forward is still forming, but we’re already in relationship with it and can choose where we want to go.