10:17  pm  AHST 08/26/2022
    1:17  am    PDT  08/27/2022

   4:17  am   EDT   08/27/2022
   9:17  am   BST   08/27/2022

This New Moon in Virgo has as its signature the need for using the energy of discernment in all things, particularity with our thoughts, our reasoning, the ways we look at the world, the stories we tell ourselves about the world and our place in it. Mercury’s energy, dealing with the mind and how we process and filter information, is prominent in this chart. Mercury also is the trickster energy, and Virgo’s discernment is strongly necessary in this age of disinformation. Ever since Kellyanne Conway came up with the phrase “alternative facts” to try to diminish an untruth, we’ve had the perfect meme to define politics in the US in the last presidency.

But telling lies, or ”white lies” (pun intended) is only the tip of the iceberg that seems to be sinking the ship of the Republicans. We also must be careful what truths we hold to be self-evident. With the direness of the planet’s state of health (health also being Virgo’s bailiwick) it is becoming increasingly difficult to continually experience the background radiation of catastrophe, both political and ecological, that characterizes our present day reality.

Hence Virgo’s ability to choose what to focus upon is essential for our health. How we work our life energy, (i.e. “work smart”) is up for us this month. This New Moon forms an almost precise challenging 90˚ angle (minus 2 minutes of a degree) to Mars in Gemini. When an angle is this exact, the Universe is asking us to pay even more attention. Mars, our action-oriented energy, in Gemini loves to have a good debate, or comes to quick conclusions, even to the point of using a straw man argument, just to keep the dialog going. Too much of the forebrain kind of activity, too much rational thinking, interferes with our ability to sense what the heart is telling us as far as our own truth.

Mars is also powerfully aspected in a Grand Trine (3 planets in a harmonious 120˚ interaction) with depth-charging Pluto and Mercury, ruler of Gemini. So we’re capable of being strung out with our thoughts, to the point where we’ve lost the thread completely. But we can also use this aspect positively to search deeply beyond a surface argument to the deeper motivations behind what’s being communicated. Pluto is the “exposer” and allows us to see beneath the surface gabble.

Mercury’s opposition to Jupiter and Neptune cautions us about inflated ideas, and grandiose schemes. With these aspects, the legal profession is going to have its hands full with deceptive machinations and manipulations of laws and statutes. The trickster archetype is on the loose this moon cycle, especially as Mercury turns retrograde on September 9th, until October 1^st turning its effects inward and thus affecting outward communications.

Meanwhile as we look at our libidinal energy, our creative life force, Venus in Leo should be feeling fun-loving, free and creative. But this New Moon chart brings her into an opposition to Saturn, where fun and creativity meet the limitations of physical reality, either through obligations to work and relationships, or time or materials limitations. This opposition forms a T-square to Uranus, which is the higher octave of Mercury. Essentially we need to think of our reality differently, to reframe what it is we’re experiencing, not in a spiritual bypassing way, but to look at what we are facing realistically, and yet still see that there is a higher truth or purpose to what is happening in our world and the world. Uranus represents humanity’s highest aspirations, and the T-square’s heavy push might seem like these aspirations are just fantasies or somehow unreachable. But again I remind us that what we dream about, what we imagine is what our reality becomes. What we see around us is already the result of our collective beliefs and imaginations. How many of us believe that humankind is essentially unable to live without war, violence or corruption? How many of us dream that we will come through this era learning to live together with all of our differences? The more we dream this as possible, the more we will see a change in our collective reality.

Uranus’s ultimate goal for us is to realize that we are all deeply connected, no matter the distance or even the time between us. Interestingly in this chart, Uranus is in a wide trine (120˚) to Pluto, a rare aspect between these two outer planets. Outer planet aspects are indicators of social cycles. The last time Uranus exactly trined Pluto was in 1922. The next exact trine will be in 2026, with Pluto in Aquarius, and Uranus in Gemini. When these two come together, great reforms, sudden changes, and dynamic progress can be made. They will be in and out of a wide trine aspect over the next 4 years, which I consider to be the years of breakdown and transformation, and from which reforms and progress will eventually emerge.

"The medicine for ending war and the medicine for ceasing ecocide, the methods, the strategies, the actions, are the same—interrelationship, interconnection, interdependence.” – Deena Metzger