Now it “begins”… this is the real start for 2011. A New Moon and a Solar Eclipse! Wow! And yet, at the very moment of the begin­ning, we are remind­ed that we can­not go for­ward with­out tak­ing care of what has come before…

Each New Moon presents us with the theme for the next month. So, the Capri­corn New Moon means our focus this month should be upon the word of Capricorn.…Responsibility. The word is derived from Respon­dere, “to under­take in return, to per­form one’s part in a solemn engagement…and to be respon­sivus or answering.”

The rev­e­la­tion of the true mean­ing behind a word pro­vides a greater under­stand­ing of our cul­ture and con­scious­ness. We can turn this word around and see that respon­si­bil­i­ty means lit­er­al­ly our “abil­i­ty to respond”, our “abil­i­ty to answer”. Respon­si­bil­i­ty is the call we must answer to per­form our right­ful part in the life of our soci­ety; our ful­fill­ment is sim­ply to per­form our duty.

Our duty, our respon­si­bil­i­ty is to ful­fill our­selves, to be what we were meant to be. This is the Capri­corn moment, to reach the apex of our poten­tial and so ful­fill our­selves in the man­ner that is made avail­able and deemed wor­thy by our cul­ture. But what is our duty, what is at the core of our ful­fill­ment, what is it that we are being respon­si­ble for?

We are humans and we have needs which we can and must ful­fill with and through one anoth­er. We are not alone; we are social beings and to be respon­si­ble means that we must be able to respond to the needs of those around us, those we are respon­si­ble for. That is our duty; and that is our true path to fulfillment.

We stand in a great chain of cre­ation, each gen­er­a­tion tasked with the care of those that fol­low, as those who came before cared for us. We are guid­ed by prece­dent, we hon­or our tra­di­tions and we pre­serve and pass down what has been achieved thus far. This is the mes­sage of this month, this New Moon of Capricorn.

But this New Moon is a Solar Eclipse, the Earth, Sun and Moon are aligned again and a shad­ow races across the face of the Earth this time. The Past (Moon) is blot­ting out the Future (Sun) so that we on Earth (Present) feel more strong­ly the bur­dens of our past. We have some unfin­ished busi­ness to attend to. A New Moon rep­re­sents a fresh start, a new begin­ning, but the eclipse is say­ing you need to fin­ish what you have left undone. You can­not “see” your Future (Sun), if you let the Past (Moon) get in the way.

So each of us, and all of us col­lec­tive­ly, need to look with­in and take some time to see what we have left undone, where we have not been respon­si­ble to our­selves or to another.…and fix this before we can go forward.

Some­times you have to take a step back before you can take the next step for­ward, the next step in the ful­fill­ment of your destiny.