by Robert Wilkinson
Here's part two on how this powerful Virgo Solar Eclipse will be impacting us over the next 4 weeks (and 53 months!)
Over the next 4 weeks, this Solar Eclipse in Virgo will put us all into a productive training of some sort, where we are educated through our ability to experiment in cooperative interactive skills. All in all, this Eclipse will help us get very clear about why we had to act on our own behalf beginning the Summer of 2013, and show us how to get and stay connected to the bigger picture going on around us as well as the world in general.
This Partial Solar Eclipse will bring endings and adjustments, as well as a quickening that will balance many things out while showing us repetitive patterns that show us a way to a greater peace and inner equilibrium. This Eclipse will bring a new strength, as well as a sense of freedom and play for those who learned their lessons well when Jupiter was in Leo!
This New Moon in Virgo is earthy, distributive, practical, and marks a huge turning point in the lives of many due to Venus biseptile Saturn at the last degree of Scorpio. This sets up 7 “hot zones” that will be triggered over the next 4+ years every time a planet transits any of those zone, which I’ll discuss in the next Eclipse article.
This New Moon is the eighth in a sequence falling at the end of their signs, and it’s also the fourth and final New Moon with Saturn in back in Scorpio. This is 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 three. Among the most important are Mercury sextile Venus, Venus conjunct Mars, biseptile Saturn, and trine Uranus. We also have Mars square Saturn, Jupiter binovile Saturn, opposed Neptune, and trine Pluto, and Uranus novile Neptune and square 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 distributive, balancing, training, and renewing New Moon occurs at 21 Virgo on September 12 on the west coast of North America, Hawaii, and Alaska, and September 13 everywhere else. This one gives us the ability to demonstrate how we’ve trained ourselves to “put on the show” since last November, and shape our energy into significant and useful skills. Play with practical forms of your freedom to be creative, and you may find joyous new beginnings!
This is the eighth 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 Virgo, the coming Full Moon Sun will be in Libra. 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.
Is This New Moon “Void of Course?”
This New Moon falls at 21 Virgo, and the Moon makes no significant aspects through the rest of its time in Virgo. You will read in other places that this makes it a “Void of Course” (VOC) New Moon. However, I disagree with most interpretations of this phenomenon, and this is why.
First, the definition of a VOC Moon is that it makes no exact forming aspects before leaving the sign. In this Lunation, there one significant minor aspect made, that being the Moon decile (semi-quintile) Venus. Because that’s not a traditional aspect, some would consider this a VOC Moon.
Supposedly a "Void of Course" Moon shows that nothing significant will happen concerning events during the time the Moon is VOC. That is a very limited and erroneous view of an astrological phenomenon. Life is infinite and ever-changing demonstrating its robustness through "the 10,000 things" that eternally come and go in the course of an eternal stream of interrelated events. Since all that arises are part of our magnetic field within the larger Unified Field of Consciousness, how could there ever be a time "when nothing significant happens?"
So regardless of the supposedly VOC New Moons at this time in history, we must search for the meaning of the configurations since they reveal the evolving Divine Patterns in the NOW. Remember that we have the power to act or react from our center of Higher Awareness, and are not victims of astrological patterns.
As an aside, besides the objections I raised in my articles on the Void of Course Moon, historically the VOC Moon was used ONLY in Horary Astrology before the latter part of the 20th century. That would seemingly limit the validity in applying it in the other branches of Astrology, including any evaluation of a Lunation where the Moon falls in the final degree(s) of a sign. That’s why I do not consider most interpretations of a VOC Moon to be relevant in understanding what this Lunation may yield.
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 Mars square Saturn and the forming Jupiter opposed Neptune, while the harmony comes through Venus and Jupiter trines, and Mercury sextile Venus. Given the powerful concentration of planets between mid-Leo and mid-Libra, you can bet those sectors will be highly active over the next 4 weeks.
This New Moon will jumpstart Virgo energy wherever it falls in our chart. That's why this New Moon can yield a lot of practicality as well as creativity due to Venus and Mars in Leo. Overall, the trines should bring excellent harmony and understanding that will stabilize our lives over the long run.
Because it happens in Virgo, Mercury is the ruler of the Lunation. Because Mercury is in Libra, Venus is its ruler, and Venus is in Leo, ruled by the Sun. That makes a “chain of dispositors” that serve as the backdrop for all the other planets in the map except Neptune in its home sign of Pisces. You can find out more about dispositors at the link.
The Virgo seed indicated by this New Moon helps us shape the heart energy of Leo and express it in practical forms. This Lunation features Venus 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 3.
Because Jupiter in Virgo leads the Lunation, it’s time to learn, to quest, to seek a greater truth or vision, or accept training to demonstrate self-induced discipline that leads to skill. We are quickening everything for many months to come, and stay clear about the bigger picture, learn how to give things a momentum so they prove to be in our continued interest, and make our vision and/or skills of special value whenever we can.
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 Full Moon at 8 Leo/Aquarius, when the Sun triseptiled Pluto. This anticipated Mars triggering the Grand Irrationality when it too moved through 8-14 Leo in the last half of August around the same time that Mercury in early Libra triseptiled Neptune and biseptiled 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 3.
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 5-9 Pisces, 26-30 Aries, 18-22 Gemini, 9-13 Leo, 1-5 Libra, 22-26 Scorpio, and 13-17 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 these two 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-fourth 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 at 20 Pisces. This will help us heal anew through our positioning within collective consciousness, and promises nourishment at the end of “our day of labor.” It shows that some ordeal is almost over, where we will find a “richness of experience” and a gathering of energy. We now are moving into a time of healing through learning how to touch and be touched, in subtle as well as obvious ways.
This continues to show us how to merge the sacred and the everyday in our lives. 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.
In this chart Neptune is at 9 Pisces. The degrees that Neptune transited in 2015 beginning at the March Equinox is a span we haven’t experienced for over 150 years. This degree is related to collective healing lessons we were first exposed to in April 2012 when Chiron first crossed this degree.
We are again quickening and dropping 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 2014-2016 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.
We will now move into a quickening, and will drop many irrelevant considerations as we spur ourselves toward a goal. This will result in a mastery that will lead to new functional roles and truths in the next year. The collective consciousness is officially in uncharted waters.
More on Saturn’s Universally Important Influence
We now approach the end of the Saturn in Scorpio era. Between October 2012 and December 2014 we 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.” 2015 begins 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 the past two years.
As I noted earlier, in this chart there are very important aspects to Saturn from Venus, Mars, and Jupiter. Venus biseptile puts those areas of life at a fork in the road, while the Mars square brings an old Mars-Saturn cycle to fulfillment. Jupiter will bring revelations over time which require we make certain practical leaps of faith to demonstrate a mastery over dualistic conditions.
Saturn in Scorpio
This is the last New Moon with Saturn in Scorpio, ending the era that began in the Autumn of 2012. 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 returned this Summer, where we finished 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 gave 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 twentieth 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 1 Libra, showing our development comes through being the embodiment of some archetype, or “perfect form.” Here we grow through becoming our sacred ideal, and demonstrating that transfigured form for the world to see. As this was where Saturn camped out in November 2009 and late March and early April 2010, whatever Saturn taught us during that period will factor into the growth patterns these next 4 weeks (and 53 months).
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 inferior conjunction with the Sun a few weeks ago which occurred at 23 Leo the degree of Mars in this Eclipse. Whatever was indicated by 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. This Lunation opens us to a 4 year period of training for a greater group service, as well as strength, freedom, and creativity.
Mercury Retrograde
On a final note for today, Mercury is about to go stationary retrograde. It’s been in its “shadow zone” for about 2 weeks, and thus has been slowing, or as I put it, “crashing into retrograde.” If you’ve wondered why things already seem to be retrograde, that’s why.
You can find out a lot more about the coming Mercury retrograde in Libra by getting a copy of the new expanded 2nd edition of my pioneering book A New Look At Mercury Retrograde, the 2015 winner in its category of The Indie Spiritual Book Awards. The first major work on Mercury retrograde ever written, it offers in-depth information about Mercury retrograde people, Mercury retrograde in the various signs and houses, and what the entire Mercury Retrograde phenomenon is about. If you want to know what we can expect from Mercury retrograde in Libra, or the last one in Gemini, or the others in any other sign and the influence in the houses, it’s all in there.
The paperback is available through Amazon.com or your local bookstore, so if you want the newest edition go there and order your copy. Of course, it’s also available as an ebook through Amazon Kindle or Barnes and Noble Nook. I've included links to both sites.
As I’ve mentioned before, it is written for both astrologers and laypeople. I have just about everything you could want to know about Mercury retrograde, including how it works, what it means, celebrities who have it in their charts, historic events that happened during Mercury retrograde, and what signs are involved in future Mercury retrograde periods.
By knowing more about 2014's Mercury retrograde periods in Pisces/Aquarius, Cancer/Gemini, and Scorpio/Libra, as well as 2015’s Mercury retrograde periods in Aquarius, Gemini, and Libra, you may see patterns in what was going on in your life, what you were taking a new look at and why, and how this "looking back" influenced your choices as you moved through past events.
Here's the link to where you can order your copy of A New Look at Mercury Retrograde. to check out possible ways this Mercury retrograde effect could play out over the next 4 months. Just make sure you get the 2015 edition and not the Weiser 1997 edition.
See you soon with part 3, which will cover Sabian Symbols, Jones patterns, element distribution, and a whole lot more!
© Copyright 2015 Robert Wilkinson
Energy under pressure. What a great phrase. Splat! I'm sure my process will come to a halt with the VoC moon. Fat chance.
Posted by: caliban | September 11, 2015 at 05:37 PM
Thank you! :)
Posted by: Lu | September 11, 2015 at 07:07 PM
Full of information. I fully agree with your comments and reasoning behind the Moon Void of Course. Is there anything that is void, void of course? Not at all. If we do not understand something that does not mean there is a being void, but a knowledge gap.
What a fantastic, complete summary of so many things. They can be applied to the individual, collectives or the whole process humanity is going through! Indeed, things are changing fast in these "inter mediate" times in between the old era and the new that is already present and making itself even more present every day.
Ready for the following post.
Blessings be to all
Posted by: Nic | September 12, 2015 at 10:17 AM
Robert, I went back once again to take a look at my journal notes of May June July 2011 after your comment: 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.
In the process, I reviewed the July 1, 2011 solar eclipse and noted once again that a rare new Saros cycle began. I had speculated then that the entire cycle might represent a new consciousness,one of Love.
Given all that has transpired in the past 4 years, I'd say we've made a good beginning, including a lot of surrender and change.
Posted by: Jo Garceau | September 12, 2015 at 04:51 PM