A Thoughtful and Changeful New Moon

The New Moon taking place Sunday evening on the West Coast, which transpires later in the night, on into the next day, if it is further to the east where you live, is a very interesting lunation. This is true in part because of the placement of the ruler of the Taurus Sun and Moon, namely Venus. We find Venus in mid-Cancer, opposed to Pluto, and ruled by the Moon, standing for our softer and more feminine side. With Venus and the Moon in the astrological configuration known as mutual reception, and with Pluto thus involved, there is a transformational component now to all our bonding activity. Both Venus and the Moon symbolize partnership with important others around us, and with our own hidden parts, deep within our psyches. It is undoubtedly true that this theme of relationship represents a changing landscape in this second half of this enormously significant decade that we find ourselves in, and that we as individuals, and as a society, are attempting to navigate.

Transformatively active Pluto has occupied the highly social sign of Capricorn ever since 2008, a powerful indication of the extent to which our society is currently evolving, right from the time of the housing bubble and subsequent financial correction of that year. Since Pluto is featured in this second half of May, we have the reminder of what has been radically evolving for each one of us — and where we still need to exert ourselves. We have had the strong period of intense revolutionary and evolutionary pressure represented by the seven exact hits of the Uranus-Pluto square that defines this early 21st Century, and are now riding the aftermath of this intense wave, attempting to take it all in and to integrate the meaning of what we have come to understand, in order to see our changes through.

With Mercury stationing at the timing of this New Moon, preparing to begin its retrograde cycle less than 24 hours later, on Monday the 19th, we have plenty of food for thought as we head into these next thirty days or more. The backward motion of Mercury, in Mercury's own sign of Gemini, indicates an intensely introspective period of time. In addition to all the usual symptoms of the Mercury Retrograde period, missed connections and mechanical breakdowns, our thoughts are inwardly focused. Mercury stations to direct motion on June 11th and does not escape its retrograde shadow until the 26th. During this time, we do well to reflect upon where we are, as a society, and how as individuals we contribute to the evolution of the collective that surrounds us. We thereby gain greater recognition of our ultimate nature as human beings.

The Sabian Symbols were created in the early 1920's — nearly one century ago. The symbol for this New Moon, the twenty-seventh degree of Taurus, is "A squaw selling beads," and we can recognize that we are to understand this image from the standpoint of the social context of its day; a poor woman is selling her cultural icons to be able to physically survive. Marc Edmund Jones remarks "this is a symbol of the soul's fundamental disinterest in everyday superficialities, and of its characteristic anchorage in an inner reality [with] exterior squalor indicating a great satiety of experience [and] petty excellencies of person dismissed as inconsequential in comparison with the fruitage of skills." His keyword is DETACHMENT. He calls the Symbol indicative of "creative aplomb ... in even the least of situations." We will indeed need everything that we have in order to handle the huge shift, as a society, that we are in the midst of. In addition to our strength as individuals, we are truly interdependent, and we cannot afford to fool around any longer. As the words of U2 remind us, from their 1992 mega-hit, "We are one, but we are not the same/ We get to carry each other, carry each other/ One."

A Thoughtful and Changeful New Moon

What is in store for you in the next few months?

Chart for the New Moon on May 17, 2015

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November 2024