Work was slow at the beginning of last month, so slow I was starting to worry that the recession had finally caught up with me and swallowed my business whole. My little Venus in Cancer, ever insecure, took to clipping coupons and flexing its claws, ready to grasp any bit of fish or seaweed that floated by. Those claws started to get a little pinchy, and my promotional efforts were yielding no results - so at the New Moon in Cancer I put together a prosperity ritual.

It was a magical leap of faith of the kind I'm seldom inclined to take. Born with hard-working Saturn in Capricorn in the second house - the house of money - I have an innate distrust of easy money. So to appease the gods of hard labor (and to honor my Puritanical forebears), I like to begin my rituals with a lot of sweat and elbow grease. Since the New Moon had a strong Pluto signature, I began with days of deep housecleaning, to symbolically release old financial beliefs and patterns; then finished up with a great ritual from Dorothy Morrison's book Everyday Moon Magic:

Place a small piece of aventurine in the center of a one dollar bill and visualize large amounts of money flowing into your hands. Then enchant the objects by saying: Stone and currency of power Your many blessings on me shower Bring money to me - let it flow Into my hands, then make it grow Until my need is quenched at last Cash and stone, do what I ask Fold the bill around the stone and secure it with a piece of green floss or ribbon, then carry the packet in your purse or with your pocket change.

The Capricorn skeptic in me suspects it might be a coincidence - my business has always had slow times - but whatever the reason, within a week of my ritual, my calendar was fully booked for the next three weeks.

(Amusingly, the ritual seems to have galvanized our cat Bodhi as well. Several times a day since the ritual, I hear her patented "fierce huntress" trill and pattering paws coming down the hallway, and soon she's dropped a little plastic ball or toy mouse at my feet. "Prosperity? No worries, Mom, I've got it covered!")

This Full Moon ushers in a new, two-year-long cycle of eclipses in the signs of Cancer and Capricorn. Welcome to a critical phase of redefining safety and security and of figuring out how to provide for yourself and your loved ones. (For more insight into how this eclipse affects you, consider the houses in your chart and any planets near 15 degrees of a cardinal sign - or, order my eclipse report). Our household is okay at the moment, but we do live in California, a state that is teetering on the precipice of bankruptcy. Many of our friends are unemployed, and others with government jobs have had their hours cut through furlough programs. It's a little hard to see where it will end up, but I'm pretty sure it's not going to be pretty.

California Dreamin'

Even when times were flush, it's always been fashionable for those in less sun-dappled climes to look down on California, my beleaguered, long-time home. And it's true that many of our problems are of our own doing. We didn't get here overnight; we've arrived after years of voting for expensive programs while simultaneously scorning tax increases. Anyone who runs a household can tell you that this is not a winning financial strategy. And now, as transiting Saturn moves over California's Sun in Virgo¹, the bill collector has arrived at the door.

It's not the first time California has almost gone broke. We just never seem to learn from past mistakes; it's as though we have been guided by magical thinking ("it'll all work out if we just believe it will!") as a first line of defense, rather than as a ritualistic deal-closer after the hard work has been done. I just don't believe magic is designed to work that way.

I've often thought that part of the reason for California's head-in-the clouds reputation, from an astrological point of view, is that so many people from other parts of the country have moved West and ended up here. Now, before you fire off that angry email, let me finish: As you move West, your relocated Ascendant moves backward through the zodiac. Move a couple of time zones West, and your natal 12th house (the unconscious) becomes your first house (your outlook)². Without a periodic injection of cold reality, a good number of transplanted midwesterners may indeed be "California Dreamin'".

Given the 12th house is natural domain of dreams and psychic phenomena, is it any wonder that California has such an... otherworldly reputation? As a British character in Steve Martin's film L.A. Story puts it, "[My ex-husband] thinks L.A. is a place for the brain-dead. He says, if you turned off the sprinklers, it would turn into a desert. But I think - I don't know, it's not what I expected. It's a place where they've taken a desert and turned it into their dreams. I've seen a lot of L.A. and I think it's also a place of secrets: secret houses, secret lives, secret pleasures."

As an adolescent, I was dragged unwillingly to California from the Midwest and spent years doing battle with my 12th house secrets and dreams. But gradually, the place won me over. It's impractical and crazy and contradictory, and I just adore it, in the way you always have a soft spot for the crazy ex-boyfriend who ended up in prison but was a great kisser. (On the other hand, there's a good reason he's your EX-boyfriend: he was destroying his life and threatening to take you down with him.)

As is often the case with this gargantuan hub for movies and television, California serves as a metaphor for something much larger than its own considerable problems. As eclipses moved through Leo and Aquarius from mid-2007 through the first half of 2009, humanity stirred from its collective dream and has started to reclaim a lost sense of community, to band together and try to change course. But now, as the cycle of collective crisis moves into Cancer and Capricorn, we have to figure out what we need to make ourselves secure, and reach consensus on how best to get it. There's no harm in hoping for magic, and California has no shortage of metaphysically-minded people (like me!) performing prosperity rituals. But as Capricorn reminds us, there comes a point where you have to roll up your sleeves and back up your magic with hard work and difficult choices.

Previous Cancer/Capricorn eclipse years - such as 2000/2001, 1990/91, 1981/82, 1972/73 - have been pivotal turning points for the entire United States, as these eclipses conjoined the nation's Sun, Venus, and Jupiter. The results of the 2008 elections demonstrated that, as a country, we're ready to dream new dreams. If you were born with planets in Cancer and Capricorn (and to some extent, Aries and Libra) these years may have been important turning points for you, too. But before we can move forward, we have to let go of the past, and of some of our cherished illusions.

The Solar Eclipse in Cancer (July 21) later this month will shake the foundations of our sense of tribe, history, and heritage, temporarily loosening us from the moorings of our collective past. And before we set sail in new waters, we'd better do something about the fact that our ship is leaking. At this Full Moon Eclipse in sober, pragmatic, puritanical Capricorn, it's time to get serious. It's our turn to live and learn.

Raise the shade, look outside
Leave your dreams back in bed
Find your shoes, walk outside
Shake the clouds from your head
Like the morning headline in the
newspaper read
It's your turn to live and learn³