by Robert Wilkinson
Over the next 4 weeks, the New Moon in Leo introduces us to a time of the release of our creative energies in the social-emotional sphere, and many will receive “messages” that show them a greater way of service, or how something’s “come home” with a message for our Soul.
This New Moon is the seventh in a sequence falling at the end of their signs, and it’s also the third New Moon with Saturn in back in Scorpio. This is the next to the last of four New Moons with Saturn in Scorpio occurring between June and September 2015.
This Lunation has a number of important aspects in play which I’ll discuss in part two. Among the most important are the Lunation conjunct Venus retrograde, conjunct Jupiter out of sign (oos), square Saturn, and trine Uranus, and Mercury quintile Saturn and trine Pluto.
So What’s Happening?
Today we’ll do an overview of the Lunation and some of its primary qualities. In part 2 we’ll cover Sabian Symbols, aspects, distributions, and patterns.
This stabilizing, culminative, creative-expressive New Moon occurs at 22 Leo on August 14 at 7:53 am PDT, 10:53 am EDT, 3:53 pm BST. This one will show us how to concentrate and focus on our inward spiritual Self, unveil the future, imitate someone or something to help us grow, and begin the final move forward out of the Saturn in Scorpio era.
This is the seventh New Moon where the Sun falls in the sign preceding the next Full Moon. This is the opposite of the “normal order of Lunation Suns,” where the New Moon Sun is in the same sign as the next Full Moon Sun. In other word, while this New Moon Sun is in Leo, the coming Full Moon Sun will be in Virgo. Since I explain this phenomenon and what it means in the Full Moon articles, you can find out more by consulting the Full Moon articles of two weeks ago or two weeks from now.
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
There are quite a few major forming aspects in this chart, featuring both frictional and harmonizing aspects. The challenges come through frictional Saturn aspects and the forming Jupiter opposed Neptune, while the harmony comes through the trines to Uranus and conjunctions involving both Venus and Jupiter, as well as the powerful Mercury trine Pluto helping us to extraordinary clarity and precision when it comes to taking care of details.
As with last month, Saturn is in close semisquare to Pluto, which is one factor in recent widespread tensions. Again, more on the aspects in part two. Given the powerful concentration of planets between early Leo and mid-Virgo, you can bet those sectors will be highly active over the next 4 weeks.
This New Moon will jumpstart Leo energy wherever it falls in our chart. That's why this New Moon can yield a lot of new creativity, forms of self-expression, and innovation that will free some and open wider vistas for others. This can bring excellent harmony and understanding that will stabilize our lives over the long run.
Because it happens in Leo, the Sun is the ruler of the Lunation. While that makes the Sun a powerful dispositor for many of the other planets, due to Mercury being in its home sign of Virgo, it is its own final dispositor, as well as the dispositor for Jupiter. And of course, Neptune in Pisces is its own final dispositor as well. You can find out more about ”final dispositors” at the link. A final dispositor is a very strong self-referencing point of power that serves as a backdrop to the energies it rules, and this chart features 3 of them.
The Leo seed indicated by this New Moon helps us experience heart energy and express it in natural forms based in the decisions we made when planets were in Cancer, which were based in the information and communications we got when the planets were in Gemini. This Lunation is the first one with Venus retrograde, so we can expect returns and reviews of things ruled by Venus in our charts.
This Lunation features Mars leading the span of signs occupied by the rest of the planets. This is another shift in the current “musical chairs” of various Jones patterns at this time in the year where we’re moving between Seesaw, Splay, and Locomotive patterns. I’ll discuss more about this in part 2.
Because Mars in Leo leads the Lunation, it’s time to act! This ushers in a quickened pace of decisions and actions, and important calculated moves that demonstrate our power on a social level. As Mars makes no forming aspects it’s not as powerful as usual, but as the dispositor for Saturn, Uranus, and Pluto, it will have an effect on how those planetary energies express these next 4 weeks.
The Grand Irrationality
The reason this section is a recurring feature in the Lunation articles is because it was set into long term play by the 2011 Solar Eclipse, which is triggered each time any transiting planet occupies any of the 7 zones of the Grand Irrationality. Since then it’s been reinforced and triggered by various Lunations, planetary stations, and transits.
This Lunation finds that the Grand Irrationality is not in play, since Neptune and Pluto are too wide to be in septile. This chart has no septile-series aspects made to either Neptune or Pluto, so the influence again wanes after its featured part at the last Full Moon at 8 Leo/Aquarius, when the Sun triseptiled Pluto. This anticipated Mars triggering the Grand Irrationality when it too moves through 8-14 Leo in the last half of August around the same time that Mercury in early Libra triseptiles Neptune and biseptiles Pluto. The Grand Irrationality will again be constantly active later this year when Pluto again occupies 15 Capricorn in septile to Neptune at 8 Pisces. I’ll elaborate more in part 2.
For those who are new to the site, here’s a bit of explanation about this thing called “the Grand Irrationality” associated with why everything continues to be so weird. As I’ve explained many times before, the Grand Irrationality is a long wave non-rational influence that has put everyone on Earth on the unceasing edge of major choice and change.
Everyone has been confronting inner compulsions, continual choices that seem to have a major impact on our destiny, and occasionally irrational behaviors in others or external conditions. It is why things seem to have an unending hard edge, why so many choices are continually thrown in our faces that require immediate attention, and why reason seems to fail at critical moments of decision.
When the Grand Irrationality is in play, it’s a time when things don’t have to make sense. We’ve been living with it for a bit over 20 years, and will be active for a few more years to come, even though we’ve begun to be on the far side of that influence.
Though it will wane in intensity in the future, there will be enough set into motion that won’t make sense that we certainly can’t be lulled into a false sense of complacency! We’re certainly still seeing some global craziness and irrational behavior, so be aware!
Because late Autumn through mid-Spring shows Neptune in close septile with Pluto, we’ll have the configuration operating in close sequence at this time. For the next few months, every time a planet makes a conjunction or septile-series aspect to either Neptune or Pluto, it’ll create a simultaneous “pulse” that will activate Neptune and Pluto at the same time, unlike the late Spring through mid-Autumn, when we have a lag in how these energies express.
The current degree spans that trigger this transformative mass configuration are around 7-11 Pisces, 28 Aries- 2 Taurus, 19-23 Gemini, 11-15 Leo, 2-6 Libra, 23-27 Scorpio, and 15-19 Capricorn. If you have a planet or angle in any of these zones, you are making critical choices and decisions that will alter your future in important ways. And because it’s in motion due to outer planets, these are pretty much forces beyond your ability to control, even if you can always control your response to these critical events.
Neptune and Chiron at the Cusp of the Age:
I offer this segment each month to give you a broader perspective on the collective atmosphere, and the long wave changes humanity is going through.
Now that Neptune and Chiron are well into Pisces, they are no longer at the Cusp of the Age. Since they first entered the zone back in 2011-2012, we’ve been navigating through the threshold of an entirely new era that will not resemble the old Age in any way within just a few decades. 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 forty-third New Moon with Neptune in Pisces for the next approximately 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!
In 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. The article deals specifically with the first degree of Pisces, which is where the Precessional point occupies at present.
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. You can find more about what we’re going through to get to the coming Age of Aquarius in the article The Sun Enters Pisces Today Illuminating the Cusp of the Great Age, Where The Age of Pisces Gives Way to the Age of Aquarius.
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.
In this chart, Chiron is retrograde at 21 Pisces. This will help us heal anew through our positioning within collective consciousness, assisting us to find a greater faith, and a broader way of seeing how we can find hope through touching and being touched, physically and spiritually. We’ve already seen how we’ve succeeded in attaining a different, more “spiritual” way of life through new values and higher standards. Here our journey to our Highest Self and a more compassionate self-expression can be felt in a new way.
This continues to show us how to merge the sacred and the everyday in our lives. Of note is the Neptune is tracking where Chiron transited in 2012-2013, meaning that the atmosphere is merging with the healing method and message of that time.
Over the past couple of years, we have healed through knowing what we stand for, and heard a call to a life renewal that is now front and center. We’ve had to let go of unnecessary baggage to quicken the pace in achieving some social goal, mastered something important in our spiritual quest, been offered higher responsibilities, and been shown what spiritual goals we’re fit to accomplish. Neptune is bringing these themes to the forefront in 2015.
In this chart Neptune is at 9 Pisces, where we again quicken and drop unnecessary considerations as we spur ourselves toward some social or emotional goal. We’ve already glimpsed our mastery, and how we are no longer held to old responsibilities. This will be very evident to those who understand the new dedication they’ve stood for these past two years, and have totally embraced the new role in the collective.
Because Neptune has not experienced 6 through 10 Pisces since the 1850s, it indicates that collective consciousness in 2013-2015 has been in an “unknown zone” relative to the recent past, but somehow echoing lessons of the last period. We are now in a review of our renewal through November, strengthening our intuition and emotional intelligence, as well as a greater feeling-connection of our positioning within a vaster field.
More on Saturn’s Universally Important Influence
Now that Saturn is direct, we rapidly approach the end of the Saturn in Scorpio era. For almost 3 years, we’ve had to find ways to use Saturn’s virtues to eliminate stagnant feelings and responses, and find appropriate boundaries and a sense of responsibility for our magnetism while shedding various “skins of personality.” As noted, the first five months of 2015 began the Saturn in Sagittarius era, showing an emphasis on maturity, responsibility, and “doing the right thing,” but using Sagittarius energy instead of the familiar Scorpio energy of October 2012 through December 2014.
As I noted earlier, in this chart there are very important aspects to Saturn from the Lunation, Mercury, Uranus, and Pluto. I believe these indicate a fulfillment of the Saturn in Scorpio era, with unique conditions and specialized insights leading to important choices despite a tremendous inner pressure from the Saturn semisquare Pluto. That semisquare shows the generally hard time many people are having right during this season.
Saturn in Scorpio
This section gets reintroduced each New Moon, since this will be a force in our lives through September. As mentioned earlier, this is the third of four New Moons with Saturn in the last two degrees of Scorpio.
From late 2012 to late December 2014, Saturn helped us see a) how we have shifted our magnetism on relationships since last Summer, and/or b) how we need to find a new view or way of understanding the losses and eliminations of the past we’ve been through. These themes have now returned for the Summer, where we are finishing the Saturn in Scorpio lessons in a metaphoric “final exam” testing our ability to be compassionate and manage energies that are under pressure.
Because of Saturn’s path in 2013-2014, through our magnetism and desires we began to demonstrate a higher level of social functioning. Now that we’ve learned what is permanent and stable in our life structures, we’ve entered into the next adventure in letting these permanent and stable factors in our life lift us to a greater vision, greater truth, and a future much more free than what we’ve known since October 2012.
Now we’re in the final scene of the last act of the play of Saturn in Scorpio, This has helped us all complete our mastery of magnetism and desire, eliminating what no longer worked.
We’ve found ways to get focused and clear about what structures are worthwhile and which need eliminating or purifying, and have finished the long wave process showing us how to conduct ourselves at a higher social level of interaction. This Summer is giving us a last look at how to focus our individual mental-spiritual energy. As Saturn rules the bones, and Scorpio rules regenerative processes, you may want to regard the 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.
2012 finished our philosophical and ideological understanding in life areas related to Libra, Capricorn, and Aquarius in our charts, and in October 2012 we entered a Scorpio intensification of magnetics so we could attract what we needed and repel what was not needed. Since then, we also had Solar Eclipses in Scorpio in 2012 and 2013 involving Saturn’s energies in huge ways.
Due to those Scorpio Solar Eclipses, over the past 2 years 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 2012, and the Solar Eclipse from November 2013 renewed the pulse. 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.
The North Node
This is the nineteenth New Moon with North Node in Libra and South Node in Aries. Good for reasoned, balanced action! With NN in Libra, our greatest development is through our ability to balance, weigh, judge fairly, be diplomatic peacemakers, and generally cultivate our grace, style, elegance, and sense of beautiful forms.
We continue to be in a time of growth through learning how to live our archetypal self, growing by seeing the balances or imbalances in our relationships. In Libra we grow through understanding what is fair or unfair in what we confront, and many will find they have strong feelings for what is out of balance.
The North Node in early Libra brings a more specific focus on growth in that direction. And of course, as I’ve noted in other articles, it also develops many of the Saturn skills and disciplines we took on and learned to deal with when Saturn was in Libra between late 2009 and late 2012.
This NN degree is 2 Libra, showing our development comes through seeing creative work as an evolving process rather than a static form. Here we can find inspiration in the larger sweep of things, and see the stages of creation as a building process that uses time as a means for making actual what is potential. As this was where Saturn camped out in November 2009, March 2010, and August 2010, whatever Saturn taught us during that period will factor into the growth patterns these next 4 weeks.
I’ll close today by reminding you that we’re still in the “middle passage” of the long wave friction and crashes symbolized by Uranus square Pluto indicating the global collision between a new humanity and an old slave/control system. Now that Uranus is retrograde and Pluto is direct, that again makes it a forming square which will be strong by late October, lasting through the Winter.
This Lunation will help us understand a greater service, or creativity, or natural self-expression, and bring forth clear and powerful forms related to the recent Venus conjunct Jupiter a few weeks ago which also occurred at 22 Leo. Whatever began at that conjunction will be given power and vitality over the next 4 weeks. The “signs and signals” from Soul/Spirit will take shape in creative-expressive forms over the next month.
See you soon with part 2, which will cover Sabian Symbols, Jones patterns, element distribution, and a whole lot more!
© Copyright 2015 Robert Wilkinson
Thanks Robert, huge amount of information. Ready for part 2.
Blessings be to all
Posted by: Nic | August 13, 2015 at 10:58 AM
Thank you for sharing your light with the world Robert!
Posted by: Heather S | August 14, 2015 at 06:04 PM
Aha, at last I can see how the irrationality zones apply. It's gonna be a challenge. Personally, of course. It's been an itch for awhile. Quasi questions with no solid answer, till now.
Posted by: caliban | August 15, 2015 at 06:19 AM
Totally on a new path/journey, Definitely twists and turns. Been 6 weeks since a suicide attempt. Seem to regenerate, and blossom when it all crashes. Not sure if its the real me shining forth, but definitely an adventure getting there. Seem to be in a de-personalization, and de-realization phase for some time. Shedding away, yet growing. Feeling more grounded, independent and free. Thanks for insightful read.
Posted by: Nancy | August 17, 2015 at 02:41 PM