A Difficult and Hopeful New Moon

Tuesday's Leo New Moon is quite a potent lunation, another in the recent series. This occasion in mid-Leo is strong in part because of the aspects made to the outer planets from the Sun and Moon, and from Jupiter in Cancer. Jupiter is exactly opposite to Pluto at the time of the late afternoon New Moon, while the Sun and Moon trine Uranus, and the Moon is in parallel with Saturn and Neptune. With all the outer planets activated, we continue into August the emphasis from the previous month on Saturn and Neptune — still in their powerful trine connection — and add a touch of a highlighting on the forming Uranus-Pluto square coming up in the fall. This represents at least a nudge on the part of the universe, and maybe more of a shove, that we recognize where we have to make a movement in our lives for constructive change, and get on with it already!

Uranus and Pluto come once more into their perfect square on November 1st of this year. Over the next twelve weeks, as they get closer and closer to this crucially intense alignment, the evolutionary pressure upon us mounts. With whatever courage we can muster, we are facing the challenge to become all that we can become, this time around the wheel of earthly existence.

The New Moon is also in close inconjunct with Chiron in Pisces, as Uranus closes on a semi-sextile aspect with this planetoid, another indication of the fraught times that we are living through. Chiron corresponds to the archetype of the Wounded Healer, and indicates the stuck places within us that need to shift in order that true healing may occur. Chiron's emphasis now also could be seen as representing that while personal transformation is necessary and good, and feels like the right thing once we have had to bite the bullet of a radically new pathway forward and actually launch ourselves, it is likely to be accompanied by some painful feelings while we are preparing to make the shift. As astrologer Rick Levine is fond of saying, the butterfly is a beautiful thing, and a vitally important and worthwhile transformation which the organism truly needs in order to survive, but it's not much fun for the caterpillar.

We are all of us in important transition to the person that we might eventually become. And yet, in our wounding and our feelings of lack, we oftentimes worry about not already being there. If life is anything at all, it is a journey, and hopefully one that we can constantly forge into a voyage of discovery tending upward toward the higher purpose that we all hold inside.

The Sabian symbol for Jupiter at the 10th degree of Cancer this first part of the month, in opposition to Pluto, is "A large diamond not completely cut." This could be said to apply to each one of us in our various stages of imperfection. The trick is to be able to recognize the diamond in the making, rather than to dwell on the imperfection.

A Difficult and Hopeful New Moon

What is in store for you in the next few months?

Chart for the New Moon on August 6, 2013

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