by Robert Wilkinson
We have a New Moon in 2 days. Over the next 4 weeks, the New Moon in Virgo indicates a time of efficiency, practicality, returning to our roots, and keep experiences of a social and/or cultural nature. Here’s where we learn “to rule is to serve,” and embrace some facet of focused Spiritual service.
This New Moon in Virgo is earthy, flexible, and naturally inclined to fix or correct things. We’ve now left the preponderance of Cancer energies that dominated the Summer months, though there will be echoes lasting until August 2014. We’ve already gotten clear signals about how feelings are flowing or not, gotten chances to practice a new emotional intelligence, and this New Moon will reveal how we can refine our expression while being more creative or spontaneous in how we do that.
This distributive, discerning, educative and experimental New Moon occurs at 14 Virgo on September 5, 4:36 am PDT, 7:36 am EDT, 12:36 pm Greenwich Daylight (BST) The Lunation finds 19 Leo rising in Santa Monica, 21 Leo in Vancouver, 22 Virgo in Toronto, 27 Virgo in Montreal, 24 Virgo in Washington DC. That means the span of Ascendants across North America is between mid Leo and late Virgo.
Continuing eastward, we find rising signs of 4 Scorpio in Rio, 18 Scorpio in Lisbon, 19 Scorpio in London, 27 Scorpio in Berlin, 11 Sagittarius in Sofia, 17 Capricorn in Johannesburg, and 12 Sagittarius rising in Moscow. That means the span of Ascendants across Europe and Africa is between early Scorpio and mid Capricorn.
Moving into Asia and Oceana, we find Ascendants at 7 Aquarius in Abbottabad, 15 Aquarius in New Delhi, 22 Aquarius in Trivandrum, 23 Pisces in Phnom Penh, 4 Aries in Hong Kong, 13 Taurus in Tokyo, 4 Aries in Perth, 28 Aries in Melbourne, 7 Taurus in Brisbane, 20 Taurus in Wellington, and 11 Cancer rising on Maui.
So you can construct a rough chart for where you are in the world, I’ll give you the rounded up degree for each planet. Use the Ascendants given above to get a rough sense of what’s on the eastern horizon where you are, and using an Equal House system, you can see what’s going on in your part of the world for the next 4 weeks.
In this New Moon at 14 Virgo, Mercury is 24 Virgo, Venus is 24 Libra, Mars is 6 Leo, Jupiter is 15 Cancer, Saturn is 8 Scorpio, Uranus is 12 Aries retrograde, Neptune is 4 Pisces retrograde, Pluto is 10 Capricorn retrograde, TransPluto is 1 Virgo, Chiron is 12 Pisces retrograde, and the NN is 10 Scorpio.
When a Lunation is on one of the angles of a chart, it is said to be particularly powerful. Among the cities covered in this column, this month the Lunation is culminating in Europe from Lisbon to Moscow, and setting in Trivandrum and Phnom Pehn. The New Moon is on the nadir in Wellington, and rising in North America.
This is the second in a sequence of New Moons that fall in the same sign as the following Full Moon, This reverses many months of the New Moon falling in the sign preceding the Sun of the following Full Moon. In other words, this New Moon in Virgo also has a Full Moon in Virgo and Pisces. This is the reverse of what we’ve experienced since July 2011, which began a sequence of Lunations where the Full Moon Sun was in the sign after the New Moon Sun.
So we’ve now shifted back to “normal” with the New and Full Moons of August. Since I explain this phenomenon and what it means in the Full Moon articles, I’ll elaborate more on this shift between the “normal order of things” and when the pattern is reversed in the next Full Moon articles coming in about two weeks.
The New Moons and Full Moons are “God’s footprints in time.” Each shows the next in the 12 phases of how things come to be each year. The cycle could be described as follows: Life energy is initiated in Aries, substantiated in Taurus, explored in Gemini, grounded in Cancer, renewed and creatively expressed in Leo, refined and ordered in Virgo, balanced in Libra, purified in Scorpio, expanded in Sagittarius, organized in Capricorn, solidified into a vision in Aquarius, and ended/perpetuated in Pisces.
An Overview of the New Moon
This New Moon is productive, refining, and will continue to put pressure on how we are using Saturn triseptile Uranus wisely, even if the energies still seem out of balance and at times all over the map. We can expect new developments wherever we have Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, and Scorpio in our charts. We continue to learn how to express in practical ways those new feeling paths and new forms of personality integration that began in June.
This productively refines the major expansions and opportunities set into motion in June and July that will resonate through next Spring. This one helps us “materialize the spiritual,” and helps us see the importance of background in any thing we must be practical about. The next 4 weeks will give us techniques of discrimination, social education and/or experimentation, and help us be more balanced as we see what must be repaired or reconstructed.
This will be a highly specializing and productive New Moon, activating our Leo and Virgo sectors in huge ways! This helps us anchor our “up close and personal” feeling-knowing, integrating what we’ve been learning into a more perfectly formed personality. We’ve all developed an increased sensitivity to a greater feeling-flow and/or emotional intelligence via the Grand Water Trines active in June and July. This one helps us to diffuse confrontations by seeing what’s admirable in both points of view.
Since Venus in late Libra leads the cluster of inner planets between Cancer and Virgo, it is the “herald” for all that will develop between September and November which will be an area of serious focus while Mars is in Libra from December 2013 and July 2014. And we continue via Saturn to eliminate and get rid of all that we don’t want nor need to take with us into a future that rapidly unfolded in July. When in doubt, you might as well let go, since you cannot hold on to those things anyway.
This New Moon will jumpstart Virgo energy wherever it falls in our chart. This helps us ground and refine our practical function relative to the new life chapter we began in the Spring. This will help us see what we need to do, in the order we need to do it, in order to accomplish some productive expansion of our affairs. This productivity is important as we stand on one of the last forks in the road of destiny regarding the Saturn triseptile Uranus and how it works in our charts.
This New Moon has an individual, mental, and spiritual focus. Because it happens in Virgo, Mercury rules the Lunation. This puts the focus on discrimination and awareness of order, place, priority, and function that helps us express what we deeply value and admire.
So this Virgo New Moon is ruled by Mercury in Virgo, which makes it the Final Dispositor for the Lunation. However, as Venus and Neptune are also in their “home” sign, they rule themselves while Mercury rules all the rest. (I’ll be posting an update to that article soon, since the positions mentioned as examples happened a while ago.)
The Grand Irrationality is put into play by Mercury making a biseptile to Pluto. Though wide, it still will bring information or understanding related to when Venus transited the zone around the middle of August at the same time Mercury was in the early Leo zone, making 4 points of the 7 pointed Star pattern active. This is the next step of that journey, and this New Moon will have major implications for what the Sun triggers in about 10-17 days after the Lunation, as well as when Mars sets the Grand Irrationality into motion at the end of November and beginning of December.
I’ve written extensively about the Grand Irrationality in past articles, most recently in The Grand Irrationality in May and June 2013 – Jupiter Leaving, Setting Up Triggers and http://www.aquariuspapers.com/astrology/2013/08/mars-enters-leo-triggering-major-energy-shifts-and-the-grand-irrationality.html Mars enters Leo Triggering Major Energy shifts and the Grand Irrationality. When you’re done here, please check out those articles to find the current seven “hot zone” spans and times when this larger configuration associated with non-rational behavior and conditions will be activated.
Neptune and Chiron at the Cusp of the Age:
I’ve given you this information in previous New Moon articles, but I figured it’s so important for all of us that it has borne repeating once a month. This has been a major collective factor for several years, though once Neptune goes stationary direct in early November, after that it will no longer retrograde back to the cusp of the Age. That’s why this is the last time I’ll include this information in the New Moon article
Remember that taking the long view, we stand on the threshold of an entirely new era that will not resemble the old Age in any way within just a few decades. In fact, we’re already solidly in the Dreamscape, and are already seeing long wave manifestations of the ending of the old and the emerging field we’re all learning how to maneuver through.
Other than the brief look we had in mid-2011, this is only the twentieth New Moon with Neptune in Pisces for the next 150 years. We had Neptune in Pisces for the 3 New Moons for May, June, and July 2011 which gave us a front end look at how Neptune will function through 2025.
Between August 2011, when Neptune retrograded back into late Aquarius, and the January 2012 New Moon, we were given one last look back at a greater ideal, and the changes of the last half of 2011 helped many to break out of our "chrysalis" and transform how we live and all our relationships. That is now established in the collective consciousness, as well as a growing sense of the larger light field in which all sentient Beings live and love.
If you want to know what's coming for many years to come, take a look back at the intuitions and sense of belonging to a vaster interrelated whole you were shown in May, June, and July 2011. It may help to give a sense of our collective lesson in dissolving our separateness as we finish this transition through "the Winter of the 21st Century" on our way to Spring, beginning in 2025!
During those months that both Neptune and Chiron were in early Pisces, we were offered chances to learn about bargaining and trade-offs, with the ultimate payoff a deeper and larger feeling of being connected to others. During the last half of 2011, Neptune retrograded back to 29 Aquarius, the degree where humanity was forced to emerge from its "chrysalis" as a new world is being born.
Chiron retrograded back to 1 Pisces. So those two dancing together kept us attuned to elements of this transitional span of experience for all of 2011 as we prepared to cut loose into the Neptune in Pisces era for many years to come. During 2011 both Neptune and Chiron revealed our unique part to play within a larger light/life field.
During that time, these planets at the beginning of Pisces and end of Aquarius occupied degrees representing "the Cusp of the Age," the span where the Age of Pisces and the Age of Aquarius meet. From one point of view, where we were collectively between February 2011 and March 2012 revealed what the period of (approximately) 1990-2140 is all about in the broader context of human evolution. I suspect that future generations will look back at 2011 and 2012 as being crucial in showing long range patterns of larger evolutionary necessities.
Neptune and Chiron dancing between signs on "the Cusp of the Age" had the effect of making it seem like we have all been occupying a very weird dreamscape which we'll be navigating for years to come. The trick for us is to apply our new strengths and understanding freed from the ghosts of the past, and by riding the waves of intense (but curiously steady) pulses of spiritual energies shaping our minds, we can find techniques where our efforts will lead us to forms of good fortune.
During the year they danced together in this critical degree span, they provided us a bridge to understanding the global lessons we all must embrace, and helped us graduate into a new view of how we are an essential part of a greater whole. I'll give you links to articles explaining more about "the cusp of the Age" at the end of this article.
As Neptune went stationary direct at 1 Pisces around the time of the last 2012 Solar Eclipse in Scorpio, Neptune was literally at the “Cusp of the Age” between April 2010 and January 2013. It was conjunct Chiron the entire time, showing that this era was about all of learning to heal into our Higher Selves through greater awareness and compassion, as well as feeling our place within the larger collective feeling-field.
In this chart, Chiron is retrograde at 12 Pisces. This will help us review and heal anew through our positioning within collective consciousness, where by seeing how we’ve “demonstrated our qualifications” we are now able to fulfill some part of our higher collective “healing” function.
In this chart Neptune is now retrograde at 4 Pisces, where we are again experiencing the collective feeling-field we all went through May-June 2012 and February-March 2013. This is teaching us how to navigate within “psychic traffic jams” so we can link to “community values” and allow the “free flow from ideas to consummation.”
Again, Chiron shows us how we can heal into our Higher Self. During 2012 the focus was on healing into our Higher Selves through seeing what we’re dedicated to, what skills we’ve cultivated, what “call” we’ve heard, and how we’ve quickened our striving.
During the next 4 weeks we can heal through remembering and putting things together we’ve been dealing with over past months within a greater collective spiritual field. We’re now hit a time of reviewing various ways to heal into our Higher Selves through November, when many will find themselves with higher responsibilities as Masters of obscure realms.
More on Saturn’s Universally Important Influence
Because of Saturn’s path these past several months, through past understanding and practice we have begun to demonstrate a higher level of social functioning. Now that we’ve learned what is permanent and stable in our life structures, we can now “tear ourselves away from the known and familiar” and move into a new dream, a new ideal, a new sense of purpose. Follow the “avidity” and you’ll move easily into new patterns.
Saturn in this Lunation chart is moving forward at 8 Scorpio, which will test our ability to manifest positive Saturn traits given the review we’ve had since February of the lessons Saturn has been teaching us since November 2012. The lessons of this month will have some similarity to what we first confronted in early December 2012 and again in early May 2013 about stilling our minds so we can experience illumination.
As Saturn rules the bones, and Scorpio rules regenerative processes, you may want to regard the current Saturn in Scorpio transit as symbolizing a type of “bone regeneration,” or the elimination of all in our skin and bones that would block our ability to meet and greet others at a higher level of dignity, reserve, and “civilized” behavior. This shows us a long wave elimination and regeneration work each of us is doing in our own ways and times.
2012 finished our philosophical and ideological understanding in life areas related to Libra, Capricorn, and Aquarius in our charts, and since October we have entered a Scorpio experience of an intensification of magnetics to attract what we need and repel what is not needed. Saturn in Scorpio will continue to be a MUCH different manifestation of Saturn than we were used to between 2010-2012!
We have now finished the long wave process of learning how to conduct ourselves at a higher social level of interaction, which will confirm our “social status” and help us be part of a refined display of interactive class, style, and culture. Now we have to show what we know, and walk the talk! Where Saturn was in the February and March New Moons began the larger Saturn lessons of 2013 which we’ll be learning until October.
Because of Saturn’s influence in Scorpio, we continue to eliminate and regenerate, let go of that which no longer works, and find ways to meet people at the highest levels of interaction. Saturn continues to help us get focused and clear about what structures are worthwhile and which need eliminating or purifying.
Due to the 2012 Scorpio Solar Eclipse, we’ve been looking back to rehearse the future after eliminating elements of the past. This opened the doors that we walked through in late December that continued through January. Whether we want to or not, we’ve all had to be willing to embrace a purification process, especially purifying the life of stuck feelings and desires, and open to a new game and a new way of playing that game.
Of major importance in this New Moon chart is that Saturn is on the exact degree it occupied at the May 2013 Solar Eclipse in Taurus! That means the lessons of the next 4 weeks will be directly related to the lessons of those Eclipses, including any issues involving fear, rigidity, taking responsibility, or being called to a greater maturity through letting go of old Taurus responses these past few months. There are links at the end of this article that will take you to what I wrote about that Eclipse if you want to know more.
As noted in other Lunation articles, with North Node still in late Scorpio, our greatest development is through our ability to eliminate, regenerate, attract, and repel as part of a greater effectiveness. Consider this as a time of learning more from our losses than what we hold on to. How we grow now will pay major dividends once Saturn moves into the second half of Scorpio at the end of 2013.
North Node in Scorpio show we can grow through understanding magnetism in a more focused, active way. Where it is in this Lunation chart shows we can grow through seeing how we are part of an emergent group personality, as well as through our sense of connection with people with whom we’ve done things together in the past.
As Saturn moves forward, it will concretize all that we’ve been learning via the North Node while it’s been in middle and late Scorpio. Though the lessons will take a Saturnine form, by early 2014 we’ll have had many opportunities to contact our innermost “God force” and move beyond old forms. Especially this Autumn, we will continue to learn to go to our “center of reality” and see how Spirit and Soul are dancing with whatever in our personality is conflicted.
This is a time of growth in effective orientation so that we can bring Spirit to matter, and the ideal in a grounded form. What we move into now will take shape once Saturn moves into the second half of Scorpio this Autumn.
Besides the very dynamic Grand Irrationality and the second irrational configuration indicated by the New Moon septile Saturn with both triseptile Uranus, we actually have a few other very powerful aspects in this Lunation, which I’ll speak about in part 2 of this series. Besides the septile series configurations just mentioned, the major influences are Mercury quintile Jupiter, Venus quintile Saturn, and Mars square Saturn trine Uranus with Saturn sextile Pluto. Overall, it should be a highly specializing time for many, as long as you follow the flow and remember what you’ve learned about a greater emotional intelligence and stability. And show patience.....
In the next part of the series we'll discuss the various aspects at play in the chart, as well as some important degree symbols and other interesting elements affecting all of us for 4 weeks to come.
Here are the articles on the May 2013 Solar Eclipse that relate to Saturn’s current position:
The Annular Solar Eclipse at 20 Taurus May 9-10, 2013 Pt. 1 - Who Does It Affect and for How Long?
The May 2013 Solar Eclipse in Taurus Pt. 3 – How Will This Lunation Affect Us?
And as usual for the New Moon articles, here are two that are related to "the cusp of the Age."
Neptune Then, Neptune Now - The Cusp of the Age of Aquarius
Neptune Retrograde Into Aquarius - A New Look At the New Age This one has links to articles related to this theme, so enjoy following the breadcrumbs through the woods of time!
© Copyright 2013 Robert Wilkinson
any implications of this New Moon for those who celebrate birthday on Sept 5?
Posted by: Red | September 03, 2013 at 02:48 PM
The Saturnian lessons - errmm yes.
Saturn in my natal Sun and Ascendant, and I've indeed been handed lessons on stilling that runaway mind. My new job has forced me to slow down, clarify and learn waiting.
Love,
Terri in Joburg
Posted by: Aquila Ka Hecate | September 03, 2013 at 06:24 PM
It's mars in Leo in my chart (moon, Pluto)and its square to Saturn that has me concerned. Not sure how to work with that.
Posted by: Kelly | September 05, 2013 at 08:13 AM