Thursday evening, January 27, 2017, just after 7:00 pm EST, the New Moon in Aquarius arrives. Aquarius is Fixed Air, the midwinter sign, when the energy of Air is at its sharpest. Air is thought, ideas, concepts, words, logos. Aquarius values reason, well-structured theories, and core principles.
The chart for this New Moon includes plenty of emotion, both the intense drive of Fire and the diffuse embrace of Water. There is a little Earth, but not much.
The New Moon itself is separate–not completely without connections, but more on its own than recent lunations we’ve seen in which the Moon was right in the middle of fairly chaotic energies.
Those chaotic energies are still strong, so this New Moon will not feel like a respite. We remain all too aware of forces swirling around us outside our, and perhaps anyone’s, control.
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What this New Moon offers is an opportunity to withdraw for a time, to look within. The New Moon in Aquarius invites us to examine our core values, the guiding ideas on which we base our actions. We have the chance to think about what we think, review how we perceive the world, and consider the lenses we’re looking through. It might be time to plant new thoughts.
About those chaotic energies: The Pluto–Uranus square is technically over, yet we keep seeing patterns that tell us the push-pull between these two is still happening. At the New Moon, pressure focuses on the North Node, which is the point of the future.
Pluto in Capricorn represents the heavy weight of tradition, the structures already in place–and the inexorable, slow movement toward deep transformation. Uranus represents radical change, the complete upending of what has been accomplished with little regard for impact or consequences–and the surging desire within each of us to bring our deepest and truest potential into the world.
We feel, in the world and within ourselves, the driving tension between these two forces. We can see the pressure this places on the future. Which actions will be wholly destructive? Which hold within them the seeds of positive change? Which will endure? Which will fail?
The aspects between Pluto and the North Node, and Uranus and the North Node, are sesquiquadrates, a dynamic but difficult angle that pushes at the future in uncomfortable ways. Seeing this pattern, we look for easier aspects that might offer support. In this chart, there are none.
The only other aspect to the North Node is from the New Moon itself and that is an inconjunct, an awkward angle that shows how difficult it is right now to imagine, or even think about, what the future might hold.
This New Moon is about thoughts. And yet thinking, right now, is hard.
The New Moon is in cool, cerebral Aquarius, but the dominant theme in the chart is the cosmic empathy of Pisces. The South Node of the past, the asteroid Pallas Athena, Neptune, Chiron, Mars, and Venus are all in this last sign of the zodiac, the place of both deep connection and complete dissolution.
As has been happening lately, we might feel drawn to the past, to what we imagine were better times. Or we might feel flooded with emotions about loss, either losses already happening or those anticipated. We might be tempted to escape into whatever takes us away–television, the internet, books, alcohol, chemicals, or just zoning out. Or we could choose to dive deeply into contemplative or spiritual practice.
We’re offered a challenging set of conflicting impulses and sensations. This creates challenges to attention, focus, and clear thinking.
So the first task of this New Moon, this time of looking within, is to notice. Where are our thoughts these days? What are we attending to? Are we feeling good about where we are in our thinking?
New Moons, always, are times for planting seeds and making wishes. We can compare the New Moon chart to our birth chart, checking to see where this New Moon, which is at 8 degrees of Aquarius, falls. This area of our personal chart can point to where we need to focus.
In general, though, we can use the energy of this New Moon to ask: What are my core values? How am I expressing them in my life right now? This question can focus on the big picture–Aquarius loves the big picture–to review in the largest possible way what our theory of life looks like right now.
And we can also look at our moment-to-moment experience. Perhaps I say I am optimistic and filled with gratitude. When I check in with what I am thinking right now, though, I find I am anxious, deeply concerned, and unable to concentrate. This difference–if it exists–is worth noting.
Our seeds at this New Moon are the thoughts and ideas we most wish to express in our lives.
These might be in the form of affirmations, although I don’t find that approach works well for me. Instead, I work on listening to what I actually tell myself, and then dialogue with that in a gentle, questioning way. Whatever your practice, a focus on thinking will work well at this New Moon.
As this chart highlights, thought does not happen in a vacuum. Emotions, desires, impulses, actions, reactions all have their impact. They inform our thinking, sometimes derailing it but also providing context and significance. The fact is, we can’t remember things that don’t have emotions attached to them. And without feelings, we cannot make even the simplest decisions.
The Aquarius New Moon draws our attention to thought within the rich context of the rest of life.
This New Moon offers creative potential: We don’t have art without feeling either. There is an unusual aspect in astrology called a quintile, one fifth of a circle, that denotes creativity. The New Moon forms quintiles to radical Uranus and to the deeply subversive asteroid Lilith.
In addition, Mars in Pisces forms a quintile to Pluto in Capricorn. The sextile between Jupiter and Saturn also has the potential to support creative action–although Saturn’s square to Venus and Chiron suggests healing may need to happen first.
Somewhere, somehow, out of the messiness of the world, beautiful solutions can emerge. The seeds, the beginnings, are our core ideals. This New Moon invites us into a moment of contemplation in which we can examine and rededicate ourselves to what those are.