In the darkness before Monday’s dawn, the New Moon in Scorpio arrives. This is a powerful New Moon, signaled by the strong presence of both Scorpio’s rulers, Mars, the ancient one and Pluto, the modern one. (Calling Pluto ‘modern’ feels wrong on many levels, but there it is.)
This New Moon brings the kinds of powers that come from going into the dark (even when we fear it), from the deepest kinds of listening, and from making plans and carrying them out with careful deliberation. This is Scorpio, fixed Water, which I think of as ice. We have the silence, the stillness, and the sharp edge of ice at this New Moon.
The Sun and Moon fall at 16º53’ of Scorpio, less than two degrees from astrological Samhain at 15º00’. This year, the deep dark of the Scorpio New Moon coincides with our entry into the dark half, of the dark half, of the ancient Celtic year. This begins the Celtic year.
In modern times, we link darkness to secrecy, lies, and manipulation, but this view is shaped by living in a world of artificial light. For ancient people, and historic people any time before cities, dark was simply the other half, the companion, the sister of light. Think of the Venus retrograde we’re still in, an ancient pattern that maps to the descent journey of Inanna, a queen and goddess. She must enter under the underworld to visit her sister Ereshkigal, who is the queen below, elder sister to Inanna who rules above. Again we see the close pairing between light and dark.
The Celtic festival of Samhain, like Bealtaine in May, is a hinge of the year. The veils between the worlds are thin. The ancestors are welcomed. At the Samhain supper, an empty place is set at the table with an empty chair before it. A seat for the honored dead. As the sun sets, all fires are extinguished. On a hilltop, logs of nine different woods are placed carefully. Someone strikes the new spark. The fire catches and flames brighten the sky. From each household, someone comes to relight a flame to rekindle their own hearth. The supper can begin.
I’m in the US, and hoping that these days of our midterm elections have, in fact, built a new fire from which we can all rekindle our hearts and hearths. I hope for the same success to all other places around the globe with promising election results and powerful resistance movements.
Yet for each of us, the New Moon is personal. We must relate to world events at some level, and still live our personal lives, with family, work, our hopes and aspirations. So it’s a great idea to compare the New Moon chart with your own birth chart. How this New Moon feels for you will relate to where the specific patterns of the New Moon intersect with your chart. Look for close aspects between New Moon planets and your planets. Check also which houses in your chart are hosting important New Moon patterns. This helps you interpret how this Moon may affect you.
If you have copy of your birth chart, pull it up as you read and you’ll see where the connections are. If you need a birth chart, gather your birth information (date, time, and location) and the websites astro.com or astro-seek.com can create one for you.
New Moons are time to plant seeds, which we do without being certain how they’ll grow, or what the results might look like. We’re starting something that feels new. We don’t know where it will take us.
The Sun and Moon square Mars, who rules Scorpio and is also in mutual reception with the Sun (who rules Leo). This connection confirms the power of this Scorpio New Moon. There is strength and determination here to bring new things into light. The challenge will be to move forward without exhausting ourselves.
Mars is conjunct Jupiter and the South Node of the Moon. Mars and Jupiter at the end of Leo push forward toward important goals, without being sure they have the strength and stamina to make it. They won’t give up, though.
Since the South Node is a release point, we might wonder, does this triple conjunction point to failure or loss? A more careful look at the South Node shows us instead a place where we’re letting go of what we’re done with, things we don’t need, or something we’ve resolved. This is not taking something away. This is what we walk away from.
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With the outcomes of the midterms here in the US, and important elections and resistance movements in other parts of the world, I name this Leo triple conjunction “No Kings,” which is a protest movement aimed at just that: pulling back power from would-be kings and dictators to rekindle a commitment to democracy and justice.
The square to Mars I mentioned earlier connects the New Moon to the Leo “No Kings” conjunction, reminding us we’ve lit a spark but still have a long way to go.
Mercury retrograde in Scorpio squares Pluto in Aquarius. This moment in Mercury’s last retrograde for this year brings another kind of strength to the New Moon. When we have to, we can go deep, even into dark places, to learn what we need to know. There’s information there. If we get really quiet, we can hear it. The challenge is, we’re not guaranteed to like everything we hear. Scorpio is deep and also sharp.
“The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.”
― written by Joe Klaas, quoted by Gloria Steinem
Venus in late Libra continues her retrograde season. She’s still in the descent part of her journey, diving deep into our sense of justice, our desire for harmony and balance, and our relationship patterns. At this New Moon, she sextiles Mars and Jupiter, opposes Chiron and Eris, squares Ceres, trines the North Node and sextiles the South Node. This connects Venus to the “No Kings” point, to our needs for personal and global healing, and the axis of fate in this chart. We are connected.
“I am not free while any woman is unfree,
even when her shackles are very different from my own.”
― audre lorde
The Leo cluster, Venus retrograde, the North Node, and the Chiron-Eris conjunction make up the four corners of the mystic rectangle pattern we’ve seen before. Here we have the “No Kings” point, Venus on her descent journey, the North Node point of becoming, and the conjunction of personal and global healing coming together in a rectangle with crossed oppositions in the middle and trines and sextiles around the outside: A combination of challenge and support that can carry us a long way.
What better way to honor and call in the ancestors at this turning point of the year? We welcome the dark. We go deep. We learn. We remember. We emerge. We build a better life and a better world. A big project, definitely, with no promises made. Yet here we are, at a deeply meaningful New Moon offering seeds for us to plant, in the dark, with hope.
“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.”
– Desmond Tutu
Title adapted from an image by Aniketh Kanukurthi on Unsplash
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