The Winter Solstice – the battle of the Sun
If you stand in the same place and watch the sunrise over the course of a year, you will notice that at the time of equal day and night the Sun will rise due east. If you continue to watch successive sunrises, you will notice the point where the sun cuts the horizon is drifting relentlessly towards the south east. Furthermore, as this drift towards the south occurs, the light and warmth of the sun reduces. Eventually the sun rises seemingly in the same place on the horizon, and thus appears to stop. From this visual phenomenon we gain the word ‘solstice’ (sol, sun, and -stitium, stoppage).
At this time, it was believed that the Sun god was fighting with the forces of darkness that sought to drag him down to the south and thus to death – no daylight, no warmth, no sunrise. The battle lasted, and still does last, for three days, when finally, Sol Invictus, the unconquered sun, emerges rising once again, not in the same place, nor having been dragged further to the south but victoriously having broken free of the grip of darkness, rising a notch further to the north. This was cause for celebration.
The Gift from the Moon
With our cultural focus on the Sun, we have tended to ignore the role of the Moon in this struggle with darkness. Just as the Sun takes a year to mark out the arc of sunrise along the horizon from summer to winter solstice, so the Moon’s risings, over the course of one single month, will follow the same arc (with small variations depending on its location north or south of the ecliptic). Thus, what the sun takes twelve months to do along the line of the horizon the Moon does in one month.
Now the time of the greatest light of the Moon is, of course, the time of the full Moon, and a full Moon occurs when the Moon is in the opposite zodiac sign to the Sun. Hence when the Sun is in late Sagittarius and fighting its battle with the forces of darkness, the full Moon will be in Gemini-Cancer and will be rising around the place on the horizon which marks the summer solstice.
But this place of summer solstice rising is not just the place where the Sun is at its strongest and brightest. It is also the place where the Moon will gain her greatest length of time above the horizon.
The full Moon at the winter solstice will rise higher and appear longer in the night sky than any other full Moon in the year. Just when the Sun is at its weakest, the other celestial light –the Moon – it is at its strongest.
Long before humanity began to light candles to help defeat the forces of darkness engulfing the Sun, the Moon was and still is coming to his aid and every year she gives to him more of her precious light by rising higher and lasting longer than at any other time of the year.
The opposite is also true. At the time of the summer solstice when the days are long, the full Moon rises in the place on the horizon of the Sun’s winter solstice and will be low in the sky, staying above the horizon for the shortest amount of time of any full Moon in the year. In converse deed, when the Moon is struggling for light, the Sun aids her.
It is the dance of the heavenly lights and when you light a candle or hang one of your Christmas lights in the window of your home, you too are partaking of this beautiful dance, helping the Moon to come to the aid of the struggling solstice Sun.
Gemini-Cancer
Full Moon December 2020 in the Sign of Cancer is actually in the Constellation of Gemini. This discrepancy is due to the precession of the equinoxes which has moved the Sun Signs almost a whole Sign out of alignment with the Constellations from which they were named over 2000 years ago.
The Cancer full moon on Tuesday, December 29, 2020, is well-aspected to the planet Uranus. So, the spiritual meaning of the full moon December 2020 astrology relates to welcome change, freedom, intuition, and excitement.