Tag: new moon

Boundary fence
2024, astrology, neptune, new moon, pisces, saturn

Mar 2024 – Near and Far Perspectives

Karena

There is a New Moon every month, but we only (typically) get a New Moon in any specific zodiac sign once a year. In March we get a Pisces New Moon, and, as with all astrological events, this one has some uniqueness to its energy!

What is special about this New Moon?

The New Moon occurs when the Moon and the Sun are right on top of each other in the sky (from our perspective on Earth – of course the Sun and Moon aren’t actually on top of each other!). When a New Moon occurs, we can’t see the Moon – the Sun is so bright that it overwhelms the Moon (the only exception to this is eclipses…. but we will talk about that in a few weeks when we enter eclipse season!). Therefore, during this Pisces New Moon, the Moon will not be visible, and the night sky will be very dark. Only the stars will be visible.

Physically, as well as metaphorically, the New Moon indicates a time of darkness. A time when our physical eyes don’t allow us to see much, and we are encouraged to turn our eyes inward and self-reflect. Slowing down and turning inward often results in realizations that we want to take action on, and as a result, New Moons are also times associated with completing cycles in our lives and beginning new cycles. These cycles could be related to relationships, careers, behaviors, etc. Because of the importance of this periodic self-reflection to ensure we are changing anything in our life that is ripe for change, there are a plethora of New Moon meditations and rituals to help facilitate ending cycles that we are spiritually finished with, and starting new cycles of growth.

As mentioned, a New Moon occurs every month. How often are each of us really closing down major cycles in our lives and starting new ones? Certainly not monthly! So how do we know the relative importance of each New Moon, and the area of our life we should be contemplating change? There are two things that help us determine this:

  • An individual’s birth chart
  • The other planet’s positionis at the time of the New Moon.

An individual’s birth chart

Each person usually only gets one New Moon in a particular area of life each year. For example, you will only get one New Moon per year in the area of love and partnerships. One New Moon in the area of career. One New Moon in the area of Self. So to fully get the most out of each month’s New Moon, it is helpful to know your individual birth chart to see the areas of life where you personally can contemplate beginnings/endings.

The other planets’ positions

Of course, the Sun and the Moon are just the two most visible points in the sky – there are other bodies moving around us constantly – Mercury, Venus, Mars, etc, are always somewhere in the sky, whether we can see them with the naked eye or not! And they affect the quality and energy of each New Moon as well.

What makes this month’s New Moon in Pisces unique, is that it occurs with both the Sun and Moon sandwiched between Saturn and Neptune in Pisces. This means that this New Moon will have generally Piscean themes, but will be heavily impacted by both Saturn’s and Neptune’s energies as well.

Saturn is the planet of Time. It encourages long-term thinking, delayed gratification, working in a disciplined way toward your goals, and setting strong boundaries around your work and life to help you reach those goals.

Neptune helps us recognize the Universal one-ness of all things. From Neptune’s lens, too much focus on our own individual goals and lives isn’t useful; Neptune encourages us to let go of our ego and bask in the fact that all beings are interconnected. From Neptune’s perspective, ambiguity is better than firm boundaries, and fuzziness is better than clarity.

The energies of these two planets are very different – almost opposed to each other!

So with planetary encouragement to focus on boundaries but also to ignore boundaries, to focus on the long term but also to focus on the present moment, what will this Pisces New Moon look like for each of us? Neptune has an edge in this interaction, because the Sun, Moon, Saturn, and Neptune are all in Neptune’s sign of Pisces. So the Neptunian energy of floating in blissful nebulousness will feel most natural during this New Moon. However, Saturn will be right there to prevent us from completely basking in the present moment and will be encouraging us to set some goals and diligently start working toward them.

Therefore, this New Moon energy will be very focused around long-term thinking vs short-term thinking. We will find ourselves saying “yes, but” frequently.

“Yes, I really like my friends, but I don’t feel like I can be authentically myself with them.”

“Yes, I am happy by myself, but I would really like a partner I love and depend on.”

“Yes, my job is going well, but I don’t enjoy it and wish I could do something more meaningful to me.”

As we create New Moon meditations and rituals for this Pisces New Moon, these questions of balance are the best ones to be asking ourselves.

We can’t focus for too long only on happiness and bliss in the current moment (Neptune), but we also can’t only focus on the long-term such that we are perpetually miserable in the short-term. What do we want this balance to look like for ourselves individually? With the hugely personal “planets”, the Sun and Moon, located in Pisces between Saturn and Neptune, we have to understand that there is no one correct answer – there is only the answer that we determine is right for us.

What in our lives feels dissonant or out of balance? We can never achieve perfect balance, but how do we want to move our existing balance points to be more aligned with our souls? This New Moon, borrowing energy from both Saturn and Neptune, offers us a unique set of energies to help us move our lives towards greater balance.

If you are looking for a New Moon meditation specifically for this New Moon, I have one on my YouTube channel!

Photo by Kevin Butz on Unsplash

lunation, moon

New Moon in Taurus

Karena

So much of the energy of 2020 has been heavily dominated by Capricorn and Aquarius – strongly Saturn-ruled signs. That has led to a heaviness, a darkness, and a sense of time dragging on and on while we hope, perhaps in vain, for better days to come soon.  But let’s take a step back from all of our intense Capricorn/Aquarius energy, and look at the New Moon cycles of 2020, since we are hitting our fourth New Moon of 2020 today.

Christmas Day, 12/25/19, heralded the beginning of an eclipse season with a foreboding eclipse at 4 degrees of Capricorn, the sign in which Pluto, Saturn, Jupiter, and the South Node were all clustered.  Five days later on 12/31/19, China alerted the World Health Organization of the virus that would come to be known as covid-19.  Eclipse seasons often kick off a series of related events that continue throughout the next six months, and in this case the series of events it kicked off was both epic and tragic.

Our first full lunation cycle of 2020 was off to a rough start with a New Moon at 4 degrees of Aquarius on 1/24.  On 1/23, one day earlier, China began lockdowns – the first of what would become many caused by the pandemic.

Our second New Moon of 2020 occurred on Feb 23rd at 4 degrees of Pisces.  This corresponded with Italy’s lockdown and the realization that not only had this spread well beyond China, but we also had a global pandemic on our hands and would need to take serious measures.

Our third New Moon of 2020 occurred at the 4th degree of Aries on March 24.  This was the Monday, interestingly, in which many states issued a “stay at home” order .  And we definitely saw the Aries New Moon bring the proactive energy of the warrior to the strange mix of world events.  It ushered in a cycle of people aggressively headed to the stores in droves and emptying shelves of rice, beans, hand sanitizer, and pretty much all forms of cleaning products.  The Aries warrior energy was also evident in very literal fights over toilet paper and other perceived necessities.

This energy all leads us to our fourth New Moon of 2020: A New Moon at 3 degrees of Taurus.  Maybe I am naive or superstitious (or maybe both?), but I am hopeful for this New Moon cycle.  There is a certain heaviness associated with Taurus, but it is not the oppressive heaviness of Saturn; it correlates much more readily to the heaviness of lethargy.  And that may actually be where many of us are mentally and physically at this point.  No motivation to get off the couch, because, really, where are we going to go?  Many people I know (myself included) who were voraciously reading all news and statistics related to coronavirus in the earlier days of 2020 are now suffering from serious coronavirus news fatigue, and a bit of whiplash trying to follow the latest thoughts on how contagious it is, how deadly it is, how soon it actually started spreading, etc.  Rather than the more hectic, panicked pace we were all keeping earlier this year, now many of us are making friends with the four walls of our houses, working on home projects, and planting gardens (This is causing a huge shortage of seeds!  It’s hard to imagine a more Taurean response!)

The April New Moon is also the first New Moon of this cycle not happening in the 4th degree of a sign, but rather in the 3rd degree.  In China, the number 4 is considered an unlucky number since it is pronounced nearly the same as their word for ‘death’.  Not particularly auspicious during a global pandemic!  Three is generally viewed as a much “luckier” number.  Again, I acknowledge that I am very possibly a superstitious person, but the third degree definitely seems “luckier” than the 4th, and we need all the luck we can get in 2020!

So what could all of this mean for the April Taurus New Moon?  For some (especially those on the front lines fighting the virus!), it has to continue to mean a highly concentrated and highly exhausting effort to treat people with the virus.  For those of us who have the option of taking a deep breath, though, now may be the time to do so.

As the moon slips from the last degrees of Aries into the 3rd degree of Taurus that the sun occupies, maybe a lethargic darkness will quietly settle over the world.  Maybe this next lunar cycle will give all of us the desire to look inward rather than outward.  Maybe we will focus less on scrolling through endless news feeds and browsing graphs of statistics and will instead focus on the more earthy, grounded experiences right in front of us.  Maybe we will improve our homes, our gardens.  Maybe we will improve our family relationships over shared homemade dinner.  Maybe this will give us the opportunity and desire to connect with the earth in a very real way (in a way we may not have connected with her in months, or even years!).  New Moons are generally viewed as excellent times to set new intentions; times to evaluate the past monthly cycle and prepare for a new cycle ahead.  Maybe it is time for many of us to do exactly that, focusing on what we can control rather than what we cannot control.  We cannot control the health or the economies of the world, but we can control the state of our own minds, and maybe this Taurus New Moon is a call to do exactly that.  We can ground ourselves in the sturdy energy of this most fixed sign, and find peace in focusing on the earth, our families, our gardens, homemade dinners with all of our comfort foods.  While coronavirus will be a reality for all of us across the world for the foreseeable future, maybe this lunation cycle can be a call to take a deep, full inhale, and a long, slow exhale and allow ourselves to come down from our adreneline rush.