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Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Virgo’s New Moon Cycle: Processing Our Process


Australia's Great Barrier Reef
(photo credit: Steve Evans, January 2011)

Sometimes I sit and stare at something like a New Moon and wonder what it means – which in this case would be the meaning of a Virgo New Moon in the midst of everything else going on. Then it hit me…and the answer was very simple and utterly direct.

This New Moon is all about how we are going about doing our ‘Virgo work.’ It’s about how we’re operating in life and in our own lives and what we’re working to purify or make more functional…efficient…healthy…and maybe in sync with everything which is currently going on while supporting our greater, long term goals.

And we’re doing all this with Pholus and Ixion having just gone direct. We’re also doing it after entering the intense if glorious realm of dissolving structures and breaking down of walls which stand between us and the what we need to have in place which is so very typical of the eight weeks (or so) which precedes any given Solar Eclipse.

Not to mention one in Scorpio – a sign all about being transformed through our relationship with others and with our world, a sign which tests our ability…particularly our emotional ability to get past our own fears and insecurities in the search for what we think is really our dream, our goal, our nirvana, our bliss.

This Virgo New Moon is also occurring just as the South Node (the easy way, the comfortable thing) is leaving conjunctive orb with fixed star Menkar. And since Menkar is another version of what’s easy to do – aka the thing which doesn’t require confrontation – for the past few months or so, in spite of all we all have been doing what we needed to do.

Or rather, we’ve endured all the ancillary emotionality. And the feelings which have arisen during carrying on with what we had in our minds as the thing we needed to be focused on. That has been our South Node/Menkar combination.

With Menkar at 14 Taurus, the South Node (which if you remember cycles backwards) came into five degrees of conjunctive orb  - which is to say it hit 19 Taurus - back in February, 2013…which if you remember is also the month when Saturn went retrograde at 11 Scorpio, the degree of the incoming eclipse.



During the months since, that South Node/Menkar combination became something of a bedrock – ‘the thing we could trust’ as a good place to invest our time and effort. It was Taurean. It was comfortable. We felt like we knew what we were doing and we knew that by putting our time and effort there we were going to at least be on an even keel with ourselves…we wouldn’t suffer any big nicks or cracks in the self-esteem department.

And let’s be real…humans are all about self-worth, self-esteem and self-respect, am I right? Those are the stuff of satisfaction, whether we’re rich or poor, whether we’re young or old, whether we’re single or married…whatever.

Let’s also note that this Virgo New Moon? It’s at 13 Virgo. And 13 Virgo is about as trine to 14 Taurus as you can get. What’s one measly degree in the life of a trine?

But that’s sort of the point. Back in February – as the South Node slid back into 19 Taurus and thus came into orb-of-conjunction with Menkar, we had a Full Moon at 7 Virgo. And now, as Menkar is being left behind by the South Node, we’re getting a New Moon at 13 Virgo.

Full Moons are about fulfillment and often about having finished a ‘phase’ of some project or effort. So back in February, some long term (Saturn) effort was getting ready to be completed and between then and now we have gone through the finishing of that and the ‘making good on the easy part’ (South Node) in the sense that nodes always refer to our relationship to others and our world.

And now the South Node is leaving Menkar as we get this Virgo New Moon at a moment when we are entering the thickening energetics of the approaching Scorpio Solar Eclipse…and all this is happening just as we’ve experienced Pholus (the little things which can cut us so deeply) and Ixion (the need to recognize others in this world for who and what they are) have gone direct – in Sagittarius.

In short, this is a recipe for finding out what is and isn’t working in our lives, with the the Virgo Moon part of this equation being the what we’re responsible for in terms for doing well…or not doing at all…or doing too much of, to the exclusion of other things which perhaps need doing – or with so much focus on the nuances that we forget the bigger picture.

The South Node actually conjuncted with Menkar on July 10th – just after a New Moon at 16 Cancer, a degree Jupiter will be rolling over during this very lunar month. If you remember, the grand trine in water (which began as Saturn-Jupiter-Neptune) came online in late June – at June 26th, with Jupiter’s ingress of Cancer. That began a steady increase in the emotional ‘water level’ in life. Some of us felt more emotional. Situations and conversations turned towards being about emotions and got emotionally provocative. People were ‘getting to us’ and things were ringing bells which got us to thinking about how driven we all are by our experiences…our feelings…our need to have or avoid emotionality.

Then as July 10th and the exactness of conjunction slid on by then came Uranus’s station. and Eris’ station – both of which amounted to some ‘emotional turbulence.’ There was energy breaking out like chicken pox all over the place – and yes, it did all seem highly contagious.

The combination of Uranus and Eris is dramatic. So there was a lot of drama and some dramatic things were revealed to us, through us and in our greater world. Life kept throwing curve balls at us, shaking us up in order to get us to consider what our capacities really are. And what they should be.

Critical, lyrical, esoteric and practical, with Mars having entered Cancer back on June 13 (UT/+0 time) we were all caught in our various crucibles, the lid of which was tightly locked against our ability to do anything but cope or stew or steam or vent. And that we did. And by doing that – through all that has taken and through all that we have been forced us to grapple with we have become both more imbedded in who we really are even if we are perhaps still papered with layers of situations, habits, choices and ideas which everyone seems to get cluttered up with.

You’d think we were all city walls getting pasted over with handbills or something.

Sedna’s turn to retrograde ushered in the first of a series of grand sextiles represented the fusion of cause/effect energies which will either bury us in the effort to be who we are or in the denial that we are indeed individual…or that we need to individualize and stop living on hype, dreams, or some sense that ‘it will just be okay’ if we just hold on.


That ‘holding on’ thing would seem to be part of the Virgo New Moon question…what should we hold on to? What should we let go of? Wherever Virgo is concerned it’s easy to opt for the habitual and the traditional. It’s often simpler to go along with what everybody wants and not assert ourselves.

But that isn’t always going to get us where we want to go in life. We can be the nicest person in the world and still fail ourselves – miserably. We do and do and help and support and then feel utterly empty because we have been supporting those who don’t support us in turn.

This isn’t about money. (Though yes, money has it’s place as a life necessity.) Sometimes the simple ‘thank you’ or care-worn smile of appreciation is the greatest validation in the world.


What this comes down to is the idea that Virgo is the last of the zodiac’s first six signs. In Virgo, we come to the end of the ‘inner’ or personal development sequence and face the ‘emergence’ of our abilities and drives and the nature of our motivations.

How so?

The answer there lies simply in the idea that Virgo ends at the Descendant. Though it’s technically the first degree of Libra (0 Libra), the Descendant point would be that place that Virgo leads to…and thus, where airy, theoretical Libra is the IDEA of cause effect, it’s really what we do which counts. It’s who we’re being and what we put out there into the world which turns cause into effect.

And that’s the Virgo dynamic.

So when we talk about Sedna in association with a Virgo New Moon, at some level that speaks to the whole of this next month …the lunar ‘phasing’ of our days…as being about the grace of our individuality or uniqueness, or the trials we face in becoming unique and in discovering what needs to happen and who we need to be in order to be able to be effective (i.e., get the desired ‘effect’ from our causal energy) in our daily life. In the whole of our life. In this world.

That makes this month a month about figuring out where we excel and where we lack…what we need to work on and what we need to have some (Sedna) perspective on.

Hopefully a “matured” perspective, yes – which would mean one which is ready…or on the way to being ready…to go out into the world or take us out into the world.

As for the (Pholus)Ixion part of this process? That – and the South Node leaving Menkar’s aura would seem to be about the ‘revealing’ of where improvements need to be made. Where we tend to time and time again trip ourselves up as the thing which can be worked on during this month’s lunation – or even uncovered, probably in the midst of some Virgoan process which has us focused on being just attentive enough that we’re able to ‘see what we’re doing.’

Or maybe not doing.

Or doing which gets us in a bind.

No matter what year it is, no matter what degree the Virgo New Moon occurs at, it’s basic theme is always more or less ‘get to work.’ Or ‘its time to make things work.’ Whatever house of your natal chart Virgo falls on, that’s the prime area of concern – call it the “arena” in which you’ll be experiencing day to day events. Then we add on the house containing Mercury (as ruler of Virgo) and the sign Mercury is in. Both of these will – especially in terms of their aspect to Virgo give you a hint as to what you’ll be facing.

The basic idea here is this: if the New Moon is Virgoan, the underlying issue is functionality which supports the  greater purpose. That idea is why the thing which is so easy with Virgos (or with anything Virgo) – which is to get totally caught up in the nuances and details to such an extent that you never get the ‘greater purpose’ taken care of (at least not in a purposeful manner!) is a negative.

 As the second of the zodiac's earth signs, Virgo involves the process
of working on what we are or "have" (be that tangible or in terms of ideas
or abilities) and bringing that to the point where it can be put out into a
(Libra) world - at which point it will build towards our (Capricorn) aims.

I know, I know…I’ve heard all the defenses about exactness and thoroughness and doing your best and all that. And it’s all fine. It’s just that when we talk Virgo, there is always some point where the forest gets lost for the over-focusing on this tree…and that tree..and that other tree over there…and lookie at that cute little tree beside the brook…

There’s a famous slightly crude expression which goes like this: when you’re up to your ass in alligators it’s hard to remember that the prime directive was to drain the swamp.

Understandable? Yes. Alligators are serious critters. I did a very long film location down in Louisiana and when one of the locals said ‘don’t stand too near that shore, there’s a ‘gator in the water’ I moved my city girl self to higher ground. (Don’t ask me why I wore nice white heels out to the swamp, either – I just did.)

Virgo asks us to have priorities, to utilize those priorities in doing our best but to always remember that getting the job done is the point of all things.

Sometimes just what the job is becomes the problem, yes. Is it the thing at hand…? Or is it the working on yourself to be a better person doing that job at hand?

That would be the avenue of discovery we travel every time we encounter the Virgo brand.

As for 13 Virgo, that’s a degree about owning one’s own choices. And yes, maybe with the New Moon taking place in the wake of Ixion’s station, owning up to how or why (or what) you’ve done in the manner you’ve done it is now important. Ixion often points to those things we do because we like doing them…or because we simply like doing them the way we like doing them in spite of the fact they don’t work.

Ixion…Virgo…yes, that might well be the case. And because of that, some of us will spend this month clinging to the notion that what we’re doing is okay when it isn’t and some of us will feel persecuted – even punished – for things we don’t seem to be able to get a handle on with regards to their incorrectness.

With Ixion (and Pholus) at 18 Sagittarius and the New Virgo Moon occurring at 13 Virgo, there is also a natural square in the works. That suggests that there is a building of (sorry to say) narcissistic energy at one pole of life’s possibilities with a building of momentum towards making good on your aims through self-discipline and thinking things through.

And with all this happening under the auspices of the incoming Solar Eclipse, we will suspect that there will be some separating of our ways. This is a natural time for changes and for things which have run their course to come to an end. In some cases – particularly at the moment with Ixion in the mix – denial of something may get peeled away or fall by the wayside.

With the North Node representing the situations and ‘relational dynamics’ sitting in Scorpio, something about our life is being eliminated or purified. Or maybe transformed, rehabilitated, denied or created through our relationships and how we relate or are caused to relate to our Self through life, our world and all the people in it.

Through all that we are guided to all we need to do and work on…and what we need to let go of, whether that’s in our life or about ourselves.

In light of which, all either goes well or we learn that we’re in for a major shift of reality yet to come.
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