Hello People! Hello Human Beans! Hello sloths and snails, hello cactus buds and mist in the morning and craggy cliffs! Hello Capricorns! This is your New Moon of the year!

A few days before the end of the year, we have the New Moon, a new cycle to set into motion before 2017. A time to take in hope. As the December-born poet Emily Dickinson writes, "Hope is the thing with feathers." What recharging activities will you give yourself time for? How will you commit or recommit to what is important to you?

The Western New Year is around the corner.

The Moon falls in Capricorn, a Cardinal sign according to Western astrology. These signs tend to be entrepreneurial (on a metaphorical level, if not actual), direct, bold, and assertive. Spells pertaining to business, organization, ambition, career, and recognition are favored here. Because Mercury is currently in retrograde, one suggestion is to focus inward, on building up and working with internal growth. What are you planning for yourself and your dreams? How are your responsibilities, career path, and emotions synced up?

How do you deal at work, within communities, family groups, and larger systems? What structures do you work well inside of? What structures do you need to build, and what do those look like? A pyramid, golden and regal? Or a tiny circle, comprising of found, beige rocks—an encapsulation of the process?

You can look back at the New Moon from six months ago, during the summertime. It was a New Moon in Cancer. Do you remember what was happening for you at that time? Take a moment to list some manifestations in your life over the past six months.

What has transpired, and what do you still desire to take place?

You can go further back, to the last New Moon in Capricorn, in January of this year? Where were you? What were you doing then? Where were your meadows, the paths to take, the cliffs to scale?

Below is an excerpt from the work "Often I am Permitted to Return to a Meadow", by Capricorn Poet Robert Duncan:

as if it were a scene made-up by the mind,
that is not mine, but is a made place,
that is mine, it is so near to the heart,
an eternal pasture folded in all thought
so that there is a hall therein
that is a made place, created by light
wherefrom the shadows that are forms fall...

Often I am permitted to return to a meadow
as if it were a given property of the mind
that certain bounds hold against chaos,

that is a place of first permission,
everlasting omen of what is.

How are you giving yourself permission?

Permission to be happy, permission to pivot, permission to check in with your intuition, permission to be the one and only master authority of your life and dreams?

Because you are. You deserve it, and are so very worth it. How are you going to commit to taking up space, to affirming what you are capable of, and following it through?

Suggested Affirmation: "I give myself permission to build my dreams. My commitment invites in many opportunities."

Happy New Moon, Happy New Year. May you have your health, your happiness, your clarity. May you give yourself the gift of dreaming, of giving yourself permission, and of committing to building the structures that will afford your hopeful feathers to keep growing.