Tuesday morning’s New Moon at the end of Libra, the third decan, presents a challenge–the challenge of finding and keeping our balance in a chaotic world.
The Sun and Moon are conjunct at 28º21’ Libra, our attention focused on the closing moments of cardinal Air, the daytime home of Venus.
This modern world can limit Venus to empty, trivial versions of beauty or art, whatever’s trending, but her realm of balance and harmony includes much more. In Libra, we meet the diplomat, the negotiator, and the advocate as well as the deepest artist and warmest lover.
Libra wants every voice heard, not just the pretty ones, the wealthy ones, or the powerful.
And also, the end of Libra shows us how messy, confusing, and difficult the world is. Life will never be perfect. There will always be more challenges.
Libra calls for balance, yet we end up walking a tightrope over an abyss. It’s a complicated place, this end of Libra.
In some systems, Jupiter is said to rule this decan. He can certainly make things big enough and crazy enough so we can’t miss the message.
By triplicity. Mercury rules this decan, our thoughts and communication focused on all the things we long to say as we reach for balanced ways to express our thoughts.
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At the end of Libra, Saturn reaches his degree of maximum exaltation, the strongest and most effective Saturn in the zodiac. Time to face into reality as it is, no filters, and still somehow keep our balance.
This isn’t easy. The New Moon is opposite the Chiron–Eris conjunction.
Chiron, the asteroid holding the archetype of the wounded healer, is retrograde at 24º41’ Aries. Chiron challenges us to heal personal wounds, the ones we experience in childhood. Chiron asks us to do more than “just get over it.” We’re invited to reclaim what was lost. Reintegrate all our gifts. Live more fully.
Eris, the asteroid holding the archetype of chaos, is also retrograde at 25º08’ Aries. Here the scope widens to include the world with all her needs. We’re challenged to fix what humanity has broken. To mend damage and build better.
Chiron and Eris are in the last decan of Aries, where we meet the healing power of art. Venus, in early Libra herself right now, who rules the New Moon, also rules this last decan of Aries where we find the asteroids showing us where we and our world need healing.
Opposition, the aspect here, sounds like a challenge. Maybe a fight. Sometimes it can be, yet oppositions are what we have at each Full Moon. At an opposition, we’re face to face, fully illuminating each other as we lean into key issues. There can be conflict. There’s also a chance for breakthrough. A path forward lights up.
Jupiter squares this New Moon and the Chiron–Eris conjunction, making this a T-square. This is a very exalted Jupiter at the end of Cancer, generous, beneficent, expansive.
Squares are a challenge, yet when it comes from a Jupiter this focused on warmth and support, the challenge becomes an invitation to open our minds and hearts, to lean into new viewpoints, to consider radical solutions.
We’re in a radical time period, after all. The Big Change triangle is still very much in play. Pluto at 01º22’ Aquarius trines Uranus retrograde at 00º39’ Gemini while each sextiles Neptune retrograde at 00º01’ Aries. Saturn is still in the neighborhood, but has slipped back to 26ª01’ Pisces.
The New Moon, so close to the end of Libra, anticipates a series of exact aspects to the Big Change planets as each luminary enters Scorpio, which they will do during the New Moon phase.
The New Moon squares Pluto, who at this moment represents the abyss beneath our end-of-Libra tightrope. The beginning of Aquarius is a place of exile. By choice or by decree, we have to leave home, strike out in new, unknown directions. Confusion and chaos are givens.
The New Moon forms a yod to Uranus and Neptune, with quincunxes (150º aspects) to each as they, Uranus and Neptune, sextile each other.
Again, the path laid out is not easy, but holds healing. The solution to a yod is said to lie opposite its apex, which in this case, is the New Moon. Opposite the New Moon, we found Chiron, calling for personal healing, and Eris, challenging us to address the needs of the world.
Jupiter also creates a Grand Trine in Water as he connects with that late-Pisces Saturn and the Mars–Mercury conjunction in Scorpio. Here’s our window into the chaotic world.
Scorpio is deep, incisive, unflinching, and not all that nice, actually. Mars, ancient ruler of Scorpio, can be aggressive and sneaky. Mercury right here is capable of deception, but honestly, more interested in pulling back the covers and exposing what’s really going on.
Scorpio is associated with subterfuge, but the role of Scorpio is more often to expose than to allow underhanded dealings to continue. Scorpio’s not nice. But it has a no-holds-barred commitment to accuracy, no matter how dark it is.
Connecting Mars and Mercury in Scorpio with an exalted Jupiter and Saturn retrograding back into Pisces asks us to look, to turn the rock over, to dig into that dark corner of the basement. Not for the temporary shock value, but to face into a part of reality that’s legit tough to look at.
Mars for strength, Mercury for deep insight, Saturn for reality, and Jupiter for the expansive grace to see it, hold it, and commit to healing it.
So, yes, this is a New Moon for hope and healing, but without any promises that the world will suddenly, magically, be different than it is.
The New Moon invites us to open our hearts, embrace the complexity and challenge of the world we live in, and still have the courage and heart to lean in. To be creative. To dive into challenge. To heal. To keep going.
We do that by finding the still point within. That Libra point, that place, is going to be different for each of us. It can be faith. Family. Art. Relationships. Love. Nature.
The call for this New Moon is to find our still point if we’ve lost it. To recenter in that place when we find it. And move outward from there into a world that needs us.
