Before dawn tomorrow (in my eastern time zone) the New Moon in Aries arrives. This year, the early meeting between Sun and Moon (each @ 4 Aries) links this New Moon closely to the Equinox and the beginning of the new astrological year.
We’re at a threshold, a beginning, a birth. The Aries Moon + Sun are poised at the starting line, listening for the signal to begin the race, full tilt, all out, ready to go.
Except that’s not where we are now.
We’re caught, worldwide, in a pandemic. Locked down, asked to be still, do without, think of others. This is not Aries’ wheelhouse. So what’s up?
The Aries New Moon is ruled by Mars who is currently exalted in Capricorn. Mars is powerful here and ready to work hard. We want to get stuff done.
But he’s hanging out with a really tough crowd. At the New Moon, Mars has just completed his conjunctions with Jupiter and Pluto in late Capricorn. His next conjunction will be with Saturn in early Aquarius.
If these four look like the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Mars is clearly War. He is strong, strategic, courageous, and determined. But again, we face difficulty. The needed action for most of us us to do as little as possible.
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The key to managing this challenge is understanding the New Moon conjunction with Chiron, the wounded healer.
Chiron was a centaur, beings known for their strong desires, impulsivity, and love of risk. Unlike his compatriots, Chiron developed self mastery, bending his energy and skill to the training of warriors. This is an Aries story so far.
Then he was accidentally stabbed, accidents and sharp things also belonging to Aries. Now the story changes.
The spear was poisoned. Chiron had a wound that could not be healed. He suffered with no way out. His injury limited him, changed who he was.
He could have become embittered, blaming others and wrecking havoc. Instead, he went to Zeus and asked to take Prometheus’ place, taking on more suffering to save someone else. Impressed by the offer, Zeus released Prometheus and set Chiron in the heavens, allowing their wounds to be healed.
We find ourselves today in new roles. Some are heroes, working in health care or providing other essential services. Some are malevolent, actively causing harm in various ways. Most of us are asked to stay home, keep out of the way, and be patient.
Whatever our roles, we all face real risks and their attendant anxieties. For each of us, our impulses can become our biggest, most dangerous challenges.
This Aries New Moon is an invitation into a different kind of competition. Can we overcome our fears? Can we find solace and healing in the midst of global challenge? Who are we in the face of real, if invisible, danger?
Each of us will be presented with our own fears. Maybe social isolation is itself a big challenge, the lack of connection leaving us depleted. Maybe we’re confronted with aspects of our own psyches. These can show up externally in news stories and social media posts that infuriate us, or in the shape of inner demons, the stories we tell ourselves that leave us weak.
The Aries New Moon invites us to face whatever challenges come our way with courage and determination.
The challenges may be huge: Serious illness in ourselves or loved ones, devastating losses, crippling anxiety. The challenges may seem small: Feeling overwhelmed when we can’t get something we’re used to, having to cancel a valued event, working through uncertainty about what to do or not do.
Whatever shows up is ours to deal with as best we can.
Where does 4 Aries fall in your birth chart? Do you have planets or points at or close to 4 degrees? Do you have planets or points in Aries? Or Capricorn? Or being aspected by some of the heavy hitters in the sky?
These are all clues as to where our challenges are likely to be.
If you make wishes or set intentions with the New Moon, these can focus on things like facing fear and choosing right action. We can set intentions to be patient, to reduce our risk to benefit others, or to take action on behalf of others.
I advocate working with the New Moon to make wishes and set intentions. Over the last months, though, my approach to this has changed. It’s still a work in progress. I’d like to share some of the changes.
There are long-standing traditions related to planting seeds at the New Moon. This has been my metaphor for New Moon wishing. It might still be valid, especially for some kinds of wishes, but it also presents certain limitations.
These limitations emerged as I began to study electional astrology, which is choosing advantageous times for action based on astrological placements.
In electional astrology, the Moon is really important. She (he, they) acts as a messenger. The swiftest of planets, their role is to carry information from one place to another. Therefore you want the Moon to have light, to be clearly visible––which is not true at the New Moon.
So my first important shift is to wait until what is known as “first light,” the first time we can see the Moon with the naked eye. This will vary quite a bit from location to location but is generally understood to be no earlier than 16 hours, and generally closer to 24 hours, after the New Moon.
I now choose to wait at least 16 hours before making New Moon wishes. If your wishes feel more like seeds that need to be planted in darkness, then perhaps the New Moon itself is still your best time. My early experiments suggest waiting for first light brings better results.
Whenever we choose to set intentions or take action, our choices and behaviors matter.
This New Moon and Chiron square the Nodes of the Moon, which means, the challenges relate to and will affect our path forward in this lifetime.
Even if we’re alone staring at the walls, how we do that matters. Check yourself. Let’s be safe.
The astrological charts are my own. The images in this post include the title,
adapted from the red flag by Annika Ibels,
and the following images:
shark warning by Lubo Minar, and
kayak horizon by Patrick Fore