The new moon is exact at 10:42pmEDT in Leo, the passionately creative lion with an insatiable appetite to be seen and adored in all of its uniqueness. Tradition has it that new moons are for planting intentions in the soil—going inside and growing clear about our own intentions so that we can feel them and articulate them energetically before trying to actualize them in concrete manifestations in the world. In other words, a time to realize (to make real) intentions ‘in here’ before trying to make them concrete ‘out there.’
The new moon in the sign of the Lion carries themes of setting intentions connected to loving yourself in all of your uniqueness and dynamism—unconditional positive regard, which is a tall order in a culture that profits off of the polarization of our self-loathing and our grandiosity. The key with this particular new moon is in finding a way to express the love for the many shades of ourselves, including the conscious forward-moving desires *and* the other aspects of ourselves that usually make us want to shrivel up and disappear. The reason is because all of these parts will be needed in order to meet the profound changes that are happening in all of our lives right now.
As the new moon occurs in conjunction to mercury and in a trine to Mars, the drive for the unique creativity of the self to be seen in all of its glory supports the pioneer’s drive to move forward into the unexplored territories where the gold lies.
Despite this support for momentum and a surge of creative manifestation, change is afoot: with Uranus the wild card loosely near the midpoint of Venus the relator and Neptune the inspirer (or confuser, or intoxicator), our approach to pursuing desires based on inspiration is marked by off-the-map, wild, changing solutions and approaches.
We feel drive and desires more acutely this new moon, but the usual approaches to getting what we want won’t carry the day. With Mars squaring the midpoint of Pluto and Saturn, we see that the reason usual methods of action don’t work is because the very foundations of our lives are changing—some of them faster than others. Mars, the pioneer, places himself in the middle of the action in these changing foundations, making sure that the profound changes to the structures of our lives reflect our actual desires and that there’s a place for our most precious sense of who we are to exist in what remains after the rubble is tossed away.
This new moon invites us to boldly step into the construction work and make sure the contractor hasn’t gone rogue: “do the changes in my internal and external foundations reflect what I want and where I want to go? If not, how can I know in my bones that I’m worthy enough of my desires at least being listened to? And if it’s not possible to structure my immediate reality in a way that allows my freshness and creativity to come to life, is it possible to change my perspective so I can celebrate small triumphs and displays of heroism within my present circumstances?”
If the former isn’t possible, the latter provides fuel, serenity and courage to gather seeds for the future. And at any rate, it’s too soon to call anything ‘impossible’ because the path by necessity isn’t clear: as in the Arthurian legends, the knights enter the forest where it’s darkest, where nobody’s entered before and where there’s no linear path.
The deep soul in the belly of that forest loves to make deals with our rational attitude. So when that animal in your lower brain says, “I WANT (fill in the blank: an ice cream sundae, sex, curling up in a hole and sleeping) finding a ritualized way to disrupt linear routine and grant it its wish might be the only way to move forward in the desire to renovate sustainable structures that will fulfill the soul’s desire to be at one with the exquisiteness of both sensory and emotional experiences. Our rational consciousness might judge those inner hungry demons of the soul as regressive. But the beasts in us that want pampering are also part of that dark forest into which we must enter. Finding sacred ways of indulging the wants of our inner beings in ritualized forms, without hurting ourselves or others, is an integral part of charging into that uncertain, unmapped territory that our current quests demand.
To take a bath and to sing on the rooftops; to cry ourselves to sleep and to proclaim our worthiness with supreme confidence; to feel the delight of our skin and to eat pints of ice cream; to breathe fire into a statue of all our pimples and warts—these and more are how to truly love our selves and the deeper soul beyond our selves, on this new moon.
mythopoeticastrology.com 