I woke early this morning to a clear sky, deep blue turning light, and a lovely sight: the bright, waning crescent of the Sagittarius New Moon, born on 22nd November, Full on 6th December, now preparing to fade into Moondark in anticipation of a new birth. The Capricorn New Moon arrives with the Winter Solstice on 22nd December this year…thus the weave of our tiny solar system unfolds within the vastness of the Universe, challenging each of us to find our place, our sense of meaning, our purpose…
waning crescent Moon
Cycles govern all our lives, from the vast unfolding of the life and death of stars to the tiny monthly dance of Sun and Moon with our beautiful blue planet Earth. The same basic stages apply to all cycles: seeding, germinating, sprouting, flowering, ripening, harvesting, dying back in preparation for the new, into that three day period of seclusion the Ancients knew as Moondark. Any New Moon represents the emerging energy of possibility from Moondark’s womb. The first fragile, beautiful waxing crescent appears in the night sky 2-3 days into a new cycle, indicating that fresh potential is taking form.
This image is especially appropriate in evoking the Sagittarian New Moon, which in the unfolding cycle of the Sun and Moon’s yearly journey through the twelve signs of the zodiac emerges from the unfathomable depths of watery Scorpio into the fiery, mutable brightness of Sagittarius, that restless seeker after wisdom, truth, and above all ultimate MEANING.
Visionary poet and painter William Blake – himself a Sagittarius Sun – describes Sagittarius’ reckless, abundant courage, openness to experience of all kinds across all beliefs and cultures, and great capacity to distil joy and meaning from even life’s worst adventures, so well:
“The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom”.
This most recent New Moon in Sagittarius on 22nd November 2014 carried a particularly powerful creative and exploratory ‘charge’ since the Sun and Moon met at 0 degrees 07 minutes of Sagittarius that day. Planets at zero degrees are highly potent! So – this was a great month for bathing in the abundantly rising energy of inspiration, and for working to give it form across continents and cultures…
Foreground energies : Uranus square Pluto
However, it is important to recognise that life on planet Earth is complex. Contemplating the core meaning of each month’s New Moon can only ever provide broad brush strokes. In order to form a more detailed symbolic picture of the energies of any given month, we have to take the whole planetary picture into account. For example, the 13th December 2014 saw the sixth exact square of the explosive, disruptive and tempestuous Uranus/ Pluto combination, its first major encounter since the turbulent 1960s and an increasingly dominant major planetary pattern since it began its journey towards exactitude way back in 2010/11.
Here are some of its immediate mundane effects: in Australia, a cafe siege resulting in the deaths of three people including the gunman. In USA, a family tragedy involving a deranged man shooting dead six members of his ex wife’s family. And most ghastly of all, today’s breaking news is of a revenge attack by the Pakistan Taliban on a Peshawar military school, leaving 132 youngsters and 11 of their teachers murdered. Truly horrific.
In Russia, meanwhile, tumbling oil prices are taking a devastating toll of the economy, with the rouble falling to almost half its value against the U.S. Dollar amid rising panic.
And on a brighter note my own small nation, Scotland, is once again a world leader. Today gay marriage became legal here, with the backing of an estimated 68% of the Scottish public.
From the Big Picture to individual lives: creating meaning
The inter-relationship between the Big Picture of our collective lives and the tiny individual lives of humans, as explicated by planetary symbolism, has been a source of enduring fascination for me right from the beginning of my astrological studies. In this short article I have chosen only to focus on one planetary combination and its impact, set within the context of the Sagittarius New Moon.
There is of course Saturn preparing to move into Sagittarius, thereby beginning a year-long square to Neptune, whose ancient ruler was Jupiter – modern ruler of Sagittarius. And exuberant Jupiter himself is placed in fiery Leo, spending much of 2014/5 in a dynamic trine to the great disrupter and techno-futurist of the zodiac, Uranus.
Jupiter in Leo
In sum, there is a huge charge of Jupiterian energy in our Sun/Moon/Earth system at present, both for good and ill – as is always the case. The challenge for all of us this soli-lunar month has very much been this: HOW do we take whatever inspiration has come our way and create meaning from it? What are our truths, and how do they shape our lives?
We have seen some of the appalling effects this month of deluded people living out in our world what they see as the truth – with devastating inhumanity. In this we see Sagittarian energy’s dark and deadly shadow. We struggle with the idea that such ghastly events might have any meaning whatsoever…
So – what have we done this month, even in small ways, to bring some light and inspiration into our personal world? What positive energies have come our way, no matter how difficult things may be, to give us heart and make us feel that life is worth living?
I do hope some of my readers will respond to this by leaving some comments with personal examples. Let me start you off by sharing some of mine. There are some dark and difficult things going on in our overall family life (Saturn is on my IC…) but I have had some great feedback over the last three weeks regarding my writing, return to teaching, and the astrological work I do.
And the inspiration for this post? A new writer and artist friend who lives in Hawaii (she contacted me, having read an article of mine in The Mountain Astrologer this summer) needed an astrological perspective on the Sagittarian New Moon. On the day of that new moon, she had embarked on an artistic venture linking writing, art and poetry with a new friend of hers – also met via the Internet. I was happy to write a short astrological piece for her. That has formed the core of this post…
“As above, so below” . How profound. how TRUE!
Zodiac
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1100 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2014
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
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