Interstellar Inspiration for the Sagittarius New Moon

“We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt.” Cooper, Interstellar.

I saw Interstellar last weekend. It is the most Sagittarian thing I have seen in ages.

In the world of Interstellar, a blight is blasting Earth’s food crops one by one. People die slowly, miserably, suffocating in an atmosphere of decreasing oxygen and choking dust storms. Or they starve.

And the reaction of governments is to cover up Humankind’s adventurous past of space exploration, condemn centuries of consumerism and waste, and insist on rigid enforcement of rules around food production and human reproduction. Anyone questioning the status quo, insisting on looking upwards at the stars, is quashed.

And looking at the stars, discovering the Gods and exploring the sciences, that’s Sagittarian territory. It’s also the thing that will save us.

Not just on the screen, but in our lives.

Once upon a time, eons ago, there were just a few thousand of our kind in existence. Maybe a few hundred. Science isn’t sure. What science is more and more sure of is that when the human candle came so close to flickering out, it wasn’t looking at the dirt that saved us. It was looking at the stars. That moment of near-extinction is the moment that we discovered art, and likely, religion to go along with it.

We discovered the Gods, and became Godlike ourselves as we crafted stories about them, carved their likenesses, drew them upon cave walls. Consciousness expanded, new ways of thinking were born. We learned to imagine that which we could not see, that which had not yet been, and brought those things into reality. We became human.

Sagittarius is the sign that keeps alive that spark. It’s exploration and adventure, higher education and philosophy. If Aries is the spark of personhood, and Leo is the jolly campfire, Sagittarius is the story we tell. The story that makes us, us.

The cards I pulled for this particular New Moon in Sagittarius are the Knight of Wands and the Goddess Brigid. The Knight of Wands is associated with Sagittarius. Bold, adventurous, racing ahead impetuously—not the archer, but the arrow. Not the torchbearer, but the torch. And for a Goddess companion, I drew Brigid. She is most usually associated with February’s Imbolc, an Aquarian holiday. But I think she is here this month to remind us that she’s not just healer and hearth fire, nor mistress of the forge. She is the Fire in the Head, divine inspiration.

Venus also is in Sagittarius this New Moon. She is of course the Goddess of Love; but in planetary form, she also represents relationships between sounds, shapes, and thoughts.  I have had four significant love relationships in my life. Two have been with Sagittarians. A Sagittarian lover might not always be at your side, but be sure that you will be in his heart, no matter how far she may journey.

It is this kind of love that stretches across distance, across time, across the improbable laws of black hole physics that holds the key to solving the human race’s survival crisis in Interstellar. I won’t spoil it here for those of you who have yet to see the movie. But I think that the lesson of love being the tie that connects us all and inspires us to reach into the cold dark of space or to pull through Humanity’s winters is the tale Venus would inspire is to tell, and to live, this Sagittarian season.

Saturn will move into Sagittarius in time for the Winter Solstice. Saturn is hard work and structure, neither of which are traits associated with Sagittarius. But both are necessary to bring the passionate archer’s vision into reality. Scientific laws must be learned before new ones can be discovered. Mysteries of form and line and color must be mastered before new art can be born. We must mature as people before we can truly offer our hearts to another.

Tomorrow’s Sagittarius New Moon is at the very beginning of the sign, making it very potent. If there is an area of your life that needs inspiration or expansion, this is the time to go for it. Fit the arrow to the bow. Draw the string.

Shoot for the stars.