Hello again. Welcome to the New Moon in Aquarius. The Sun’s yearly cycle is all well and good, solar and predictable as it might be. But the Moon’s cycles are more specific, closer to home, everything day to day.
The Moon gathers and magnetizes the time period we’re adrift in. It brings it into the world of matter. Through the cycles of the Moon we come to learn the qualities we associate with a certain time; the way it feels to us and the sorts of things that are happening during it.
The Moon collects and distributes the weight and heft of the yarns we spin, and bestows beginnings and endings in all of their overlapping complexities. And this New Moon is very pregnant. Pregnant in the way a book feels when you turn from the last page of the introduction to the page that reads “Chapter 1”.
The bulk of our visible planets have found their way together. They’re clumped where they’re usually scattered, orienting us towards the 30° part of the sky that tropical astrologers call Aquarius.
But we open with one planet shouting. It’s Mars. We’ve just turned our heads to see. Can’t see him without turning our heads.
Mars is the adjustment. He’s going to keep letting us know to go deeper. He’ll show you all the stubborn, dogged, perpetually entrenched things we’ve let flourish in our gardens.
He’ll hit all your topics at the same or similar times, and show you their symbiosis. What will we do about his recent shouting? We turn our heads back to Aquarius, back to the places we can find some agreement.
Aquarius is where the Sun resides this time of year. Often the Sun is there alone, or with just Mercury and/or Venus. But today the New Moon had a procession of planets announcing its ascent.
Saturn is the first to rise. She announces that the next six months are not a side-quest but contain foundational efforts. We will catch the scent of the longer era we enter, sizzling and clear. The first seeds are planted already, laid in pockets gouged by Mars; tended and fed by Saturn’s commitment and understanding of longevity.
The light of the Sun is physically between us and these planets as they rise. They don’t see us and we don’t see them. Everything they symbolize is therefore wrapped in the ticking of time, set up for a slow reveal.
Jupiter and Venus are next, in almost lock-step. They are a blessing together, bringing meaning and connection onto a stark and analytic backdrop. Venus asks us to find the pleasure in the process and keeps us engaged. She wont fully integrate what she likes and what she doesn’t like until she catches the sun at the end of March and beyond. Allow your preferences time to make themselves known. Invite them in again. Notice them and how they’ve aged. Let them have their say.
This cycle is inclusive. It asks us to show up with our differences SO LOUDLY. It’s goal is not homogenous. Insights come through the brilliance of the atypical. When you think about your own dispassionate faculties, your ability to assess.
After Jupiter and Venus, though, Mercury rises. Mercury is still invisible, caught in the brightness of our star. But Mercury has come between us and the Sun in what we perceive as retrograde motion.
That means Mercury is almost alone with us on our side of the solar system and we may be noticing this retrograde a bit more intensely than usual. Saturn, Jupiter and Venus are far from us. They’ve poured their influence directly into the Sun and have set their agendas in ways that aren’t yet perceivable. Meanwhile Mercury has a pretty grand stage to run around on.
When Mercury is retrograde, it moves closer to Earth. All things Mercurial (translation, code, messages, transportation, mechanics, technical abilities, conveyance, electricity, switches, writing implements, blogs, websites, etc) are therefore louder. They make their presence known. When the mechanics that convey impulses start to get loud, that can sometimes look like entropy winning. Car repairs would be a good example of that. We see what happens when we ignore the mechanisms we rely on to keep working. Often our attention makes no difference though. These things have a life of their own and are all part of the New Moon’s birth story.