Astrology is, at its core, the study of time cycles. Daily, monthly, annual, and multi-year cycles reflect the constantly changing energetic, emotional, political environment. The Lunar cycle takes place once a month. The Moon hits two touchstones in each cycle: the New Moon and the Full Moon. By reading the details in the charts of the current New Moon and Full Moon, we can read the story behind this very challenging stretch of history.
The Virgo New Moon
On September 17th, a New Moon in Virgo opens up a new chapter. This Virgo chapter highlights routines and habits related to health, your day-to-day work, pets, and other details of life. These are the details that tend to be sticking points these days.
In the birth chart of the United States, the New Moon conjoins the USA’s Neptune. Neptune rules infections like COVID-19. I think it was astrologer Lynn Koiner who posted her research linking COVID susceptibility to an astrological interaction between Mars and Neptune. This contact shows up in many of our individual charts, and also appears in the birth chart of the USA, which now has one of the worst outbreaks in the world.
Neptune’s strength is in compassion, spirituality, and creative imagination. But potential problematic manifestations include the rapid spread of infection– and misinformation– and other problems that affect us but remain hidden from us. Neptune’s prominence in this chart reflects the exact sorts of fraud, scapegoating, and RatF***ery we are seeing in the critical months leading up to what some are calling one of the most important elections in our history.
Update 9/18: Completely heartbroken by the news of the passing of Notorious RBG that landed like a gut-punch this evening. In hindsight, there it is, New Moon conjunct Neptune (loss) in the nation’s 9th house (courts of law). May she rest in power. May her memory be a blessing.
But I think (and hope) there’s a rainbow on the other side of the storm. I will have more to say about that in the near future.
As the Virgo New Moon lines up in harmony with Saturn and Pluto, a doorway opens and allows you some room to transform, rebuild, solidify, and clear the junk from some area of your life. Maybe it’s material junk (quite likely with an earth sign like Virgo). The physical junk may very well be a representation of mental, spiritual, or relationship junk, which will also seem lighter as you take care of business. At any rate, certain obstacles will clear, making this an excellent time to pursue order, routine, and efficiency– even while it seems that the world might spin off of its axis.
The Aries Full Moon
The Full Moon answers the call of the New Moon. And here’s how I see that working this month.
The other day, my neighbor was weed-whacking around a tree in her yard when something flew up and bounced off her goggles. I walked up after this happened and helped her look for the thing– and I found it. What I found was a 12-inch aluminum stake shaped like a large nail. Close call! Imagine if she had not put on her safety goggles. If she had skipped that detail (Virgo). With the Aries Full Moon’s ruling planet Mars now retrograde in Aries, the head, eyes, and face are particularly vulnerable. Safety first in all things!
Mars is part of the “front page” story when we look at the Full Moon with the chart of the USA, too. That same retrograde Mars both activates and challenges the USA’s Mercury. Mercury symbolizes our national media, transportation, commerce, and logistics systems. In this chart, we see the full-on attack on our postal system, which is now, because of COVID, intricately tied to our election system. There is a lot of Mars friction baked into the pie this Fall. This is especially concerning and scary in light of the increase in armed confrontations in our cities and streets.
But there’s a parallel story happening too– shown in the Full Moon’s contact to Uranus in the USA chart. The sextile aspect between the two shows a window of opportunity to overcome logistical challenges using technology, invention, and out-of-the-box solutions. The present and future hurdles are real and daunting. But in this cycle, I’m also seeing a forward-thinking, self-organizing movement from the grassroots.
The Full Moon’s contact with Chiron connects you to where you feel wounded, misfit, or “only visiting this planet”. In the USA chart, it appears in the 4th, the house of the people, the land, and our foundational traditions. The Full Moon dumps the emotional bucket. In the bucket is Aries— anger.
In your birth chart
- New Moon: 25° Virgo
This house is where you’ll tackle (or be tackled by) work and called on to take care of details. - Full Moon: 09° Aries
This house is where you’ll need to slow down and play it safe. - Meanings of the 12 houses of the birth chart
2 Responses
hey Molly, what If i don’t have any planets touching Virgo or Aries in my chart?
Hi Rachel! The chart is a representation of the entire sky when you arrived here on Earth. All the signs do not have planets in them, as you correctly observed. But the signs are all there. A house that is empty in your birth chart still gets activated when planets or other events like New and Full Moons pass through them. So there is just a little bit of charting involved in the answer to your question. I go over it with my class in this video: https://youtu.be/6ZqAyntVAVY?t=1697