The New Moon in Gemini arrives tomorrow, Wednesday, June 13, just before 3:45 pm in my Eastern US time zone.
Gemini is the sign of curiosity. Let’s get curious about what’s happening here.
At first glance, this New Moon looks like a bit of a break from the tumult of our times. The Sun and Moon at 22 Gemini don’t seem to making strong aspects. There are no obvious storm clouds looming.
Maybe this can be a bit of fun. The sky is dark at a New Moon, but that makes the stars shine all the brighter. And look, there are lots of visible planets up there.
In fact, from now until the end of June, all of the visible planets, Mercury through Saturn, can be seen in the night sky. Check any of the sky watch websites for details on how to find them in your area.
But Gemini is never satisfied with one glance. This is Mercury’s daytime sign, a place of mental agility, wide curiosity, innovative thinking, easy networking, and an intense desire to explore, learn, and connect.
Gemini is our peripheral vision, that near-constant scanning of the environment.
When we’re happy and optimistic, we look with wonder, delight, and open curiosity. When we become anxious or feel threatened, we watch more warily, the negative bias built into our brains coming to the fore.
The times we live in seem to call for wariness, but curiosity can win out over fear. We may be watching for threats, but with Gemini, can still be fascinated by the unusual and the intriguing.
This New Moon is, in fact, a call to check in with just that capacity. This is the time in each lunar cycle when we set intentions and make wishes for the time ahead.
Where are we on the curiosity vs. fear scale? At this New Moon, notice how you are interacting with information. Are you anxiously scanning the media, waiting for the next awful thing? Have you fallen into confirmation bias, when everything you see makes you go, uh huh, I knew it, it’s just as bad–if not worse–than I thought?
Perhaps some forms of media have become distractions (one of Gemini’s shadow qualities).
You dive into the endless streams of images and captions to take a break from the bad news. You only planned on checking your feed for a few minutes, and suddenly it’s hours later and what have you got to show for it?
This New Moon is a wonderful time to reset our relationships with media and information gathering. It’s a good time to set appropriate intentions to avoid catastrophizing and rein in the time we spend doing nothing in particular online.
And there is more going on at this New Moon than that.
Mercury, ruler of the New Moon, has just moved into the sign of Cancer, the Moon’s own sign. This Mercury is more emotional than usual, feeling more vulnerable, and wanting to nurture and be nurtured.
He is just minutes away from an exact square with Chiron, newly in Aries. Where are we being triggered? Which messages hit us in the heart? Which leave us feeling vulnerable?
Noticing this, while the square to Chiron is active, will point to where healing is needed. At the New Moon, we can set intentions for healing, as well as making plans to explore how that can happen.
Saturn is currently retrograde at 6 Capricorn, which means Mercury and Saturn are moving toward an opposition. This will be exact on June 15, two days after the New Moon.
Saturn is strong in Capricorn. While retrograde, he is digging into idea about authority, achievement, responsibility, and limits. Saturn might challenge Mercury in in Cancer not to allow our tender feelings to overrule our knowledge of our own limits. Mercury in Cancer and challenge Saturn to reflect on values that include people and their needs, and not only profits and achievement goals.
This too is coming into focus at the New Moon.
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At the same time, we are getting a heads up about an important opportunity that will be unfolding throughout the rest of the summer. You notice how I used that word “opportunity”? The fact is, something is coming up that is likely to feel uncomfortable. It’s another of those “growth opportunities.”
A few hours after the New Moon, Mars will conjunct the South Node of the Moon. Both are in Aquarius, at 8 degrees. This is a the first of three conjuncts between these two, as Mars will soon turn retrograde.
The South Node is the place of the past. This is where we find things we are comfortable with, things that can be a go-to.
These things, though, are too familiar. We get bored there. We can feel taken advantage of if people want too much of that from us. We’re really done here and need to move on.
An Aquarius South Node is always opposite a Leo North Node, so, one way or another, we are moving from Aquarius to Leo.
Perhaps we allied ourselves with a vision, a set of ideals (Aquarius) that do not allow space for personal, creative self expression (Leo). Perhaps we have become so committed to the collective and its needs (Aquarius), we can no longer connect with our own sense of joy and wonder (Leo). Perhaps we spend so much time in the lofty ideals of the head (Aquarius), we no longer feel the passions of the heart (Leo).
One way or another, Mars is there to poke and prod and stir things up.
In any retrograde transit, the first pass is the heads up. So, at this New Moon, part of the information showing up on our Gemini antennae will be something about unresolved stuff from the past.
What is that? It might be a twinge. It might be a cascade. Watch for messages about stuff we need to work through, release, and move on from.
Mars turns retrograde on June 26, right before the Full Moon on June 28. He will conjunct the South Node again on July 18. This retrograde pass will be the check-in. Mars will ask if we’re working on this issue (whatever it is). If the answer is yes, Mars keeps moving. If no, then the poke we get might feel stronger.
Mars turns direct on August 27 and makes his third conjunction to the South Node on September 22. This is the “last chance” pass, which feels good if we’ve worked on it and less good if we haven’t.
So this Gemini New Moon is a gateway. In the next months, we will have multiple opportunities to make peace with some aspect of our past so we can move on.
This puts the idea of tuning up our perceptions in a different light. Now we see why checking in to sure we are curious rather than wary, and engaged rather than distracted, is important.
But how do we cope with the blooming, buzzing confusion of the modern world? The amount of information coming at us is overwhelming.
The key to Gemini is to cultivate beginner’s mind. This is the Fool in the Tarot, the one willing to sail off into the unknown, eyes open, heart open, trusting the world.
This is mindfulness. This is reconnecting to a childlike innocence and openness, but with full awareness that we are adults, with experience to draw on and the ability to make good choices.
The alternative is becoming data monkey, endlessly rearranging bits of information in the hope of discovering meaning. With enough monkeys, I suppose Hamlet is possible, but I don’t want to be one.
With the Gemini New Moon, my keywords will be equanimity, discernment, and fun. Let’s play, knowing that playfulness is a deeply important quality to cultivate.
I use Unsplash for almost all my photo illustrations. All astrological charts are my own. The images in this post include the title, adapted from the black and white photo of a lake with boats by Mario Ho, the photo of computer data by Markus Spiske, the vintage photos by Fabien Barral, and the neon sign by Austin Chan.