New Moon in Scorpio: Facing the Conflict Within
The pattern of astrological energy around this new moon provides a template for the month ahead, it represents a seed energy for this next lunation cycle. And it promises to be quite a month! There are some powerfully challenging dynamics at play involving Mars and Uranus that tend to promote impulsiveness, and radical activism. Being a Scorpio new moon, this can also be a time where breakthrough insights can occur into the truth of what's actually going on. It will certainly keep us on our toes as we attempt to navigate conflict and find paths to peace, acceptance and compassion.
Today's new moon occurs at 9.27am UK time at 20˚ Scorpio, and it is a very potent new moon indeed. The eclipse season may have passed now, but the intensity that characterised it is far from over. Today the Sun and Moon make their monthly conjunction aligned to the Mars-Uranus opposition, and this packs a punch that can be volatile and unpredictable.
The Sun is applying to a conjunction aspect with Mars and an opposition aspect to Uranus, with tight aspect orbs in both cases. Mars is very strong being in its own sign of Scorpio, and it is at one of the most unpredictable moments in its two year cycle when it opposes Uranus. The fact that it does so over this new moon really heightens the instinctive tensions that are already present when Sun, Moon & Mars conjoin in Scorpio. The Mars-Uranus energy awakens our desire to act, but we are also liable to over-react at such a time. This is a time when we have to conflict within ourselves, and the way that we respond to triggers, especially when it is connected to shock and trauma. Finding peace is challenging under such astrological conditions, but it is essential that we make the attempt, otherwise the risk of re-traumatisation is high.
This new moon powerfully impacts the charts of Israel and Palestine, and I have written a separate article about this, which you can read here.
Scorpio medicine confronts us with the psychological consequences of loss, death, betrayal, and the abuse of power. It draws us inevitably into that unseen world that hides beneath the surface of the everyday. As the nights draw in around us like a dark cloak, Scorpio naturally inclines us toward those netherworld realms, where the soul seeks initiation, redemption and healing.
During a Scorpio new moon, we can visualise the essential seeds of life being sown back under the ground, carried within the rotting leaves, decaying fruit and composting vegetation. Here they will be protected by the powers of the underworld. In Roman mythology, Pluto and Persephone (Proserpina) were regarded as the protectors of the seeds and the guarantors of the harvest, as they possessed the regenerative power that would sustain and transform life within the soil, during the winter months. It is through the soil and in the depths of our soul life that we process what is not longer vital, present and visible in our conscious, daylit world. At this time, we are asked to dig deep into the soul's memory banks, accept what is lost, connect with the grief that is present in that loss, be prepared to journey into the darkness to know the mystery of our own being, and to sow a seed of renewal there. To do that we may have to sacrifice a certain type of outer ambition and surrender to the calling of the deep soul, which dwells in darkness.
Scorpio reminds us that decay and death are an inevitable consequence of our soul's incarnation in matter; that death is an initiatory portal within a greater cycle of life. We need to learn what it is to die, over and again, to the soul life while we are still physically alive. In a small way, we do that every night when we surrender our waking consciousness to the world of sleep, and submit ourselves to strange and unpredictable realm of the dream. Similarly, when we consume an altered-state inducing drug or hallucinogenic plant, we have to surrender our egoic identity to a power greater than ourselves that we cannot control, for the sake of the soul. We experience a kind of death when we ejaculate, as we submit our ordinary sense perception to that strangely pleasurable force that comes over us like an all encompassing wave; our physical energy may even seem to die temporarily, even as the potential for new life arises with it - 'le petit mort', as the French call it!
Scorpio insists upon a deep life review, delivering to us the unforeseen consequences of our youthful hopes and ambitions, revealing to us all manner of unimaginable relationships and circumstances that our soul chose to go through on behalf of its healing journey - a journey that we might only ever half-understand. However misaligned some of these soul choices might now seem, it is important that we forgive ourselves for those occasions on which we have gone astray in our actions or in our judgments - accept that we were simply unable to see the whole picture at the time. The life force is irrepressible, it prevails even in the darkest corners of the psyche when all appears lost - and especially out of the those places, it finds the will to rise again; to re-birth itself anew.
Here is the Scorpio mantra from my book, Your Zodiac Soul:
“I face my own shadow and, in so doing, I honour the depth of my soul.”
New moon blessings!
Click here to read my article about this new moon in relation to the ongoing conflict in the Middle-East.