In these moments before the New Moon, in the Dark Moon, in these darkest nights; our work is to face the remnants of the old world within
If there ever was an Aquarian moment, this is it, with Saturn, Jupiter, the Sun, Mercury, Venus, the asteroid Pallas Athena, and from Tuesday evening until Thursday night, the Moon as well, all in Aquarius. This is a rare lineup of all of the visible planets, except for Mars (which is still importantly involved as it is in Taurus, square the Aquarius planets), all in one sign.
This New Moon represents an important foreshadowing of what’s to come. Setting aside the hype and controversy around whether or not this is The Age of Aquarius (I wrote a blog last month on that topic), we are now firmly within a deeply Aquarian period of time (whatever you wish to call it).
This month, the visible planets (minus Mars) congregate in Aquarius, and both Jupiter and Saturn linger there all year. Once Jupiter moves on at the end of the year, Saturn will be there until 2023, and that same year, Pluto enters the sign. There are just a handful of weeks throughout 2023 when there are no planets in Aquarius. And then Pluto will be there (more or less) until 2044. TWENTY FORTY FOUR.
As Pluto in Capricorn from 2008-2023 represents the complete transformation of global structures, particularly structures of power, hierarchy, and control, structures of governance and economics (and more, which I’ve written about in detail over the past couple years, for example here and here); Pluto in Aquarius represents the transformation of technology, the sciences, social and civic life, and the organization of the collective in the name of the people.
So this New Moon is a really key moment, at the beginning of this longer cycle. With Mercury retrograde, what’s important now is where our minds are at. This isn’t a time for outward action, or initiating projects. We have DECADES for that (and in the shorter term, our intentions now will crystallize over the next week or so, and turn to action by late February).
This Aquarian moment is about the recognition that each one of us is an integral node in the network of humanity. The Capricornian hierarchy is losing its significance. Each one of us is equally as important. Our inner life, our thoughts, our fantasies, our words, our actions--it all matters. We can’t convince others of anything, we can’t force our way forward in this energy. But we can affect change through inner work, intentionality, spell work, language, action, involvement, and participation.
Prior to every New Moon, is a profound moment for release; for clearing out what stands in the way of the coming cycle. This cycle (month; half year; quarter century) is about centering the collective. In the old world, we had to--to some extent--adapt to might makes right. We had to--to some extent--push, force, assert ourselves. We had to--at times--interrupt or speak over others to be heard. We had to--many of us--compromise our integrity if we wanted success. We got used to a framework in which resources were scarce and competition was required.
That’s not the way of the future. In the future--which is right here and now in our minds and hearts, and is rupturing forth into our lives, even as the past careens onwards--we see that what is good for the group is good for each of us; there is no one over and above or in isolation from the rest. We depend on one another, integrally, essentially, necessarily. We breath the same air, contend with the same virus, face the same looming threat of climate collapse (which is not to say we are all the same, or have the same experiences; only that we are necessarily interconnected and interdependent).
COVID reveals this with eerie perfection: the necessity to consider the health of others in our action; through wearing masks, reducing our contacts, social distancing. These are actions we take in order to protect the most vulnerable, and in so doing we protect the health of the collective, and in so doing, we protect ourselves as well. It doesn’t work to care only for ourselves and our own freedoms without regard for others. It’s not just inconsiderate and lacking in compassion, but it puts our own health at risk in the end anyway.
This is the Aquarian revelation: that in order to care for ourselves we have to take care of the collective. Selfishness is actually illogical.
There is more to say, but for now, in these moments before the New Moon, in the Dark Moon, in these darkest nights; our work is to face the remnants of the old world within. Anyone can point to the failings of others; but the important work, the hardest work, the heroic work, is to face our own monsters in the shadows, the subtle figures in the dark that we would rather run from, we would rather hide from, we would prefer to repress, and force back down under the surface where we might pretend they don’t exist.
For these monsters are precisely what we are ashamed of, what we have been shamed for. They are what have been called our faults, our failings, our “badness”, our mind sickness, our coping mechanisms, our defences, and addictions. But there is only one way toward healing, which is a fraught word, but whatever we decide it means, it must mean facing the vital energies within which have been contorted through our survival in a sick world, where we had to find ways to survive, to adapt, to cope.
It’s only through the compassionate self-understanding that sees that we did the best we could, the best we knew how, in sometimes dire circumstances, that we will be able to face those vestiges of the old, those monsters within, that when we garner the courage to actually face, we see: they aren’t monsters at all. They are children, shivering and afraid, or tiny bullies, seeking only to protect our hearts, seeking only to survive.
It’s only through standing face to face with what we thought were monsters, the monsters we ran from, that we can see them for what they are and so thank them for their efforts and love them for their misguided attempts to protect us, and through loving them allow them to soften, to see they are safe to let down their guards, and so allow them to transform. It’s not through killing our demons that we evolve; for the demons are simply contorted patterns of vital energies that if we deny, we cut ourselves off from our own vitality.
In addition to our own patterns of thought that adapted to competition, hierarchy, and scarcity, we may also bring witness to thought patterns, complexes, and beliefs that may take many forms depending on our particular culture and subculture: anything from conspiracy theory, political thought, intellectual discourse, scientific dogma, new-age ideology, cultural assumptions and norms. Basically everything is up for review. The question is: what lines of thinking stand in the way of The Age of the Collective. What beliefs and narratives keep us from embracing care for the group, and hold us fixed in a mentality of competition?
So, in this moment before this significant New Moon, this step toward our futures, I wish you, and myself too, the courage to witness what arises, what shadowy stuff of the past is showing up to be loved and transformed, that we may clear the ground—or better, in Aquarius—the air, for what is to come.
This is a magical moment; our magic is potent now. Before the spellwork, we cleanse ourselves, and particularly, in Aquarius, our minds. We cleanse our minds through witness, through compassionately seeing what is there; not by hating what arises or seeking to be rid of it. Through seeing it. We see those old thoughts, tendencies, patterns, for what they are; outmoded, outdated, no longer adaptive, patterns of survival, strategies for coping in a messed-up world.
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