This New Moon packs a punch, so sit down, fasten your seatbelt, and keep your hands inside the car at all times. Remember how unstable and unpredictable last year was? Well, this New Moon is kicking that energy back into gear. The Aquarius mansion, because it is ruled by the lighting flash planet Uranus, is a place where totally unexpected and unpredictable experiences are the lay of the land. But this New Moon happens within a few degrees of Saturn in Aquarius, making this moment about lessons, karma, and the breakdowns and delays that are designed to teach us. The Sun and the Moon will also Square Uranus, ensuring that we are in full activation of the thing that Uranus always brings to the room; that anything can happen, and probably will. This combo made last year particularly stressful, and these few days are an energetic reminder that still, everything is changing, and changing fast.
The Moon will catch up with the Sun for their monthly meeting at 9:46pm PST tonight, so it is building all day. We have been in what is known as the Dark-of-the-Moon since last night when the Moon moved into Aquarius, the sign that the Sun is in right now. In the Aquarius mansion, our focus is on innovation, new ideas, thinking outside of the box, and connecting to your own, unique experience in a manner that does not conform with any outside expectations of you. As with any New Moon, we are setting intentions for where we are headed next, but this New Moon asks us to look at everting in a new way, and explore your willingness to try something new and exciting.
The promise of Aquarius is that if we truly listen to our intuition, we will be guided through a hero’s journey to find our own distinctive gifts. The Water Bearer knew something was missing, followed the intuitive guidance to go on a quest, and when he found water, he brought it back to the community, which could thrive with this blessing. This is your story too, especially in this New Moon. We are all being charged to go on a hero’s journey right now in order to find out how we are to relate to this new world we are creating while the old one is still falling apart. This is not a comfortable process, and this is not a comfortable New Moon. However, it holds tremendous importance to help us each as individuals dial into what the new landscape is demanding of us, and set intentions that allow us to find our gifts, and serve where service is needed most.
The discomfort I was speaking of comes from the triggering of the Square between Saturn and Uranus. Saturn is the restrictive energy of our consciousness, the pacemaker of our experience, who holds us back when necessary, so that we stay contained, and operate out of what we are learning. Uranus, on the other hand, allows us to break free of all constraints, in a manner that can of course be destabilizing, but is ultimately liberating. The fight between responsibility and freedom was a huge part of 2021, and though that transit is loosening up, these two are still holding this Square, and today’s New Moon brings all of that energy back to front and center. We may revisit new and brilliant ideas that rose up last year, but were not ready to be embodied until now.
Mercury is still retrograde, and he and is still hanging out with Pluto. Pluto brings power struggles and unconscious shadow material bubbling up from below the surface, so thinking and communicating is very stressful right now. He goes direct in three days, which means he is not moving at all in the sky as he prepares to turn around, putting us in what is known as the “storm cycle” of Mercury’s retrograde. These few days could spell lots of power struggles, communication breakdowns, and deep conversations that reveal unexpected information. Uranus’s wild card influence is also going to impact communication in challenging ways. From an astro-weather perspective, this set up is pure shit show when it comes to your conversations with others, and the general shenanigans of any Mercury retrograde. From a consciousness perspective, however, we can dial very deeply into our own desires right now (thank you Pluto), and set intentions that comes from ideas that perhaps have been deeply buried, but are coming to the surface now.
Now, not everything is conflict and obstacle energy. There is something powerful about Venus and Mars holding a Trine with Uranus right now. Venus has just turned around and gone direct after six weeks of helping us work some things out in our emotional body, and we have learned much about what’s been hiding beneath the surface of our experience of love and intimacy, and this of course also means self-love. Mars, the masculine principal planet, has entered Capricorn and will spend all of next month chasing his beloved, Venus. What this means is that we are heading into a passage where great integration can take place between our impulses to do things (Mars), and leaning into creativity and beingness (Venus). These two personal energies of being and doing are both holding a Trine with Uranus, so there is this other side bar of unexpected and surprising energy that we can actually work with, waking us up to new possibilities.
Venus coming out of her retrograde has allowed us to open up more deeply to feelings of deserving, so that we can create from a hear that feels worthy of what it desires. Mars coming along to connect with her next month will help us ground those desires into actions that will lead to their unfolding. This is a very hopeful aspect of this New Moon. Even though this intention setting moment is like declaring you are creating grace while balancing on a high wire, we are supported to dial into completely new ways of thinking and feeling, and therefore how we approach what we will build in the year ahead. We can’t quite know all that has shifted for us until Mercury turns around, and Venus finishes her third act. But we set intentions today as if we believed fully in the powerful future we wish to create for ourselves, and don’t hold back from thinking outside the box.
