A Thoughtful and Inspirational New Moon

Tuesday morning's New Moon in late Gemini is an important one, signaling ideas and mental productivity as one major focus, plus as well the beginning of the post-Mercury Retrograde period when we are recovering our wits, so to speak, and reflecting on what has transpired over the course of the previous, quite dramatic, introspective lunar cycle. Mercury stationed to direct motion last Thursday, the 11th, and is therefore only now getting back to normal, although it will not fully escape its retrograde shadow until nearly the end of June. This New Moon also features powerful aspects to Mars, to Saturn and to Neptune, indicating that we are entering into a thoughtful time of analysis and of stepping back from our usual frenetic activity in order to witness ourselves, while at the same time remaining very much caught up in the world of dynamic process and productivity.

Saturn has now drifted back into the emotional intensity of the sign of Scorpio, where he is not fully at home, although he tries, and is emphasized by an inconjunct aspect from this New Moon in late Gemini, the aspect also known as quincunx. The Moon is closely contraparallel to Saturn, with Eris in close forming bi-quintile aspect, strengthening his stern and restrictive presence in these mid-June skies. The highlighted presence of Mars represents the other big astrological factor that accompanies this New Moon. Mars and the Sun have been in close conjunction all this past weekend, and now this New Moon takes place less than half a degree away from energetic Mars. We have the urge within our consciousness to be up and doing, go, go, go in some direction, any direction, be productive at all costs, while at the same time, Saturn is putting on the brakes, encouraging us to take a pause and reflect on where we have arrived and whither truly going.

Then, too, a powerfully aspected Venus in connection to Mars and also to Neptune in Pisces, brings strong components of relationship and aesthetics — with a touch of the mystical — quite fully into play. We recognize that as we are engaged in doing and in relating, and in being the social animals that we are, we are more. We must yet simultaneously acknowledge that, in actual fact, we are spirits caught up in the material world; in our deepest selves totally free, only here for a little time, temporarily participating in the experiment of bodily living.

These thoughts are part and parcel of our self-reflective attitudes as we navigate the energies of this New Moon and recover from the intensely introspective period of the previous lunation cycle. Mercury is quintile to Chiron, which is aspected by Jupiter and the New Moon, and so another subject of our meditations is likely to be those internal difficulties and old patterns, stemming from prior wounding, that we also at times experience.

The Sabian Symbol for the degree of this New Moon has something important to contribute. It is, for the twenty-sixth degree of Gemini, "Winter frost in the woods," which Marc Edmund Jones relates to a depth of consciousness in the midst of daily life that allows us to stop and reflect on the basics of our existence. He comments on "the cosmic significance of any momentary cancellation of more immediate interests and private concerns [calling] for a reorientation in the individual's point of view [toward] further discovery of the soul's potentials," and emphasizes "the supremacy of the powers of nature over the aspirations and conveniences of man[kind]" and the "creative transformation" of natural cycles. Indeed, even amidst the onrush of summer activity, in this thoughtful and fecund time we are attuned with one part of ourselves to turn inward for a more complete idea, arising from the depth of soul awareness, of what this life is all about.