A Gemini New Moon

Sunset, with a gibbous moon over  Unthank Park in Portland, Oregon

(photo credit: Steve Benoit, July 2008)

Can you believe it? Yes, it’s already time for another New Moon. How time flies when you're busy being eclipsed, right?

Anyway...about this New Moon, the date will be June 8th. And that will be smack-dab amidst the ‘after-effects’ of Neptune’s station/retrograde - which is to say Neptune has just gone retrograde, but we're still inside the station.

Just that much is quite a lot to think about, considering what we know connections between Neptune and Mercury mean…confusion, possible deception…or on the positive side, the suspending of life’s problems in moments of delight or bliss of some kind.

I know you’re saying ‘what, Neptune and Mercury? How’d Mercury get into this?’

The answer to that is simple: any time we talk Gemini, at some level we are talking about ‘Mercury things,’ the foremost of which would be our thoughts. Our perspective. What we’re thinking. Our decisions.

And considering this is a New Moon we’re talking about, it is the moment to make some sort of choice – even if that’s just choosing to think something through.

 The chart of the Gemini New Moon

(Aries wheel - Location Not Specific)

Neptune’s turning to retrograde represents the softening or melting away, even the dissolution of positions, thoughts, pre-conceptions. That means some of us are coming out from behind our mental walls. It also means that some of us may well be losing our grip on certainty.

The date of this New Moon is June 8th. The time of this New Moon is 3:57 in the afternoon in the UT/+0 zone. And the degree we’re concerned with here is 18 Gemini, a degree with a reputation for difficulties when it comes to reconciling our love of life and our desire to life as something good with the situation. Or the facts. Or that which we may need to see in order to establish some clarity and definitive orientation moving forward.

As I say this, I’m reminded to mention something which floats through my (alleged) brain now and again when I’m doing the ‘magic finger’ typing of these blogs. That ‘something’ is the fact that having a degree as a natal influence often manifests somewhat differently than when we see something – like a New Moon – occurring at that degree. The transit, the New Moon ‘moment’ may feel or manifest more ‘purely’ than the whole of a life lived in being born with your Sun at 18 Gemini. The life lived with such a nativity gives time to explore and work through and resolve the issues. And yes, there will be those who don’t get there. But many do. This is similar to the fact that many people born with a given planet in retrograde (the popular one to cite being Mercury since we’re exploring a Mercurial idea). Someone who has Mercury retrograde in their natal chart has a time – a literal lifetime – to adjust to the influence and find ways to make it work for you as a positive. In fact, having Mercury in retrograde in your natal chart seems to make transiting Mercury going into retrograde less of a headache. You’re more accustomed to the ‘internal’ or more behind-the-scenes sort of work Mercury retrograde symbolizes, so you go into that mode with less muss, less fuss and less mental frothing.

So while this New Moon at 18 Gemini may pit us all against what we don’t want to know or do or deal with or be pitted against (conjugate on at your own pace), those born with a Sun or any other planet at 18 Gemini will merely be getting a notice that it’s time to shift into a different gear.

Hopefully they’ll be smiling at the rest of us and offering us a hand. But don’t count on it – this degree is known for ‘going another way’ which means such a native would be busy doing their own thing now, perhaps while paying less than total attention to the splashes and sounds of indecisive floundering coming from the rest of us in the cosmic gene pool.

Even apart from any native tendency which goes along with this degree, this also seems to be a moment which is all about doing what we need to be doing. And maybe that will seem unkind to others, but there is a nicely perfected trine between Juno (in Aquarius) and this New Moon which says we need to be managing ourselves and our own affairs right now.

Not that it’s all comfy-ness. With Vesta at 17 Cancer (conjunct Apollo at 16 Cancer) there is an emotional, maybe even instinctual quality to this New Moon which separates us from others even as they are separated from us. For most of us this won’t be anything huge, but since there is an ego-daunting semi-sextile between Vesta/Apollo and this Gemini New Moon, there is something uncomfortable about this moment.

Apollo and Daphne by Bernini

(in the Galleria Borghese, photo by Int3gr4te, January 2007)

Or maybe it’s about what we realize we need to get to doing which is so ‘aw shucks!’ disquieting. In the emotionally experiential (emotionally educationally) sign of Cancer, Vesta’s symbolism as ‘the cost of keeping our commitments’ may be about what we need to do to be our own person and fulfill our own potential, it may be about some ‘cost’ associated with keeping our commitment or promises to someone else (or in our profession)…or, considering that this is a semi-sextile, and semi-sextiles are known for producing or manifesting as ‘ego bruises,’ this may be a difficulty with someone else’s willingness or lack of willingness to keep some commitment to us.

If that’s the case, it would be natural to feel offended and put out – and maybe a bit confused about how to cover all the bases or catch up with what hasn’t been done as promised.

Sound like daily life yet?

That the mental flow is likely to be a bit choppy is further outlined by the following opposition: Arachne  at 18 Sagittarius with Ixion at 19 Sagittarius, Pholus-Pandora at 20 Sagittarius and Ras Alhague, the ultra-pronounced hero-villain of the fixed star set at 22 Sagittarius.

- link to –

Ixion: Our Conflict of Self

Oh golly gosh…where to start?

Embodying the qualities of a spider, Arachne is all about the webs we weave (when first we practice to deceive, perhaps?) and our entanglements. Arachne also tends to speak to ‘spinning,’ which has a whole meaning of its own in Sagittarius as the sign of media and ‘putting information out there.’

Next to Arachne is Ixion, the emblem of not learning the lesson until you get so ‘burned’ by your errors and your continuing inability to own what’s wrong with your methodology that you hit that point of no escape.
I know…we’d all like to think this New Moon is going to signal quick work and swift results. And it may. But we need to be aware of the parameters of what we do as we do it – and evidently for some folks, that’s going to be a bit much to ask.

Or maybe this is the moment when they find out that they should have paid attention, and that now Ixion-Arachne against the New Moon means they’re knee deep in the tar pits with the whole world acting like toothy, primitive carnivores snarling and licking their chops?

That’s a bit dramatic, yes. But with all this Sagittarian energy in opposition to the New Moon, our judgment is of concern. So either we’re thinking things through carefully, or judgment is coming at us. Let’s remember: Sagittarius is both an interactive AND big picture or ‘global’ sign, so this isn’t just about us. There’s something that we’re having to face now, whether it’s something we’ve been thinking is true, something we thought we could do, or some sort of societal force which is bigger and more complicated than we had thought.

 The zodiac quadruplicities

 

The Ras Alhague part of this opposition gives us a ‘it could be very good…but then again, it could go very bad’ sort of quality. And since Ras Alhague, like Pholus/Pandora, is in a third decanate degree (meaning a degree in the last 10 degrees of a sign), we know this has something to do with others. Or the world in which we live. By “degree definition,” we don’t have control. And with Pholus conjunct Pandora (which sounds like a splinter situated in a spot you can neither reach nor see) the little things count. One slip-up can be highly, even wildly Pandora-ish and problematic.

- link to -

Pholus: A Little Nasty

So…going back to that somewhat ‘separatist’ vibe spoken of with regards to the New Moon’s position at 18 Gemini…do you really want to do things your way? Or is doing it your way the best thing to do and going ‘with the group’ the definition of the problem?

F. S. Church's truly unusual conceptualization of the 'Pandora Problem' - namely, our efforts to try to close the box after we've let all the trouble out. (engraving, 19th century)

Sometimes it’s a good thing lunar cycles are only a month long. With the lunation itself conjunct TNO Chaos, fixed star Rigel and Kassandra, we will do well to listen and probably – in that ‘limitless possibilities’ sort of way which is so TNO Chaos – consider things beyond our comfort zone. That doesn’t mean we have to believe them. Kassandra’s presence in this mix says we may not.

Then again, it also says we may not be believed.

What’s a person to do?

My answer to this would be to remember that all lunations are a process, and that in being positioned in Gemini, this one is about choosing to learn – which doesn’t mean scattering efforts and doesn’t mean endless dithering. My favorite image of Gemini remains that of the jig saw puzzle…the object would be to find the pieces which fit and to build on that.

The finding part is probably Rigel, a star which in being positioned at the foot of Orion represents ‘sitting at the foot of the teacher’ in our search (Orion is ‘the hunter’ constellation) for a path to personal fulfillment.

A map of constellation Orion made by Blueshade. You'll see Rigel down at the lower right corner - which is (at least theoretically,) Orion's foot...the one he's "leading" with.

Happy hunting!
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