Preamble:
The new moon can be thought of as a window in time when the Higher-Self initiates specific lessons or personal growth intentions for the coming month, and we can use the lunar cycle as a way of decoding evolutionary forces at a more granular level than the solar cycle or the transits of the slower moving planets.
For the spiritually minded person, the new moon is a time to receive the seed impulses for one’s personal evolution, and specifically those impulses toward bringing something new into conscious awareness. Each moon cycle fits into a larger cycle, which begins at the Aires new moon, and if you seriously want to track the unfolding pattern of higher-self guidance, it is a really good idea to record a log or journal of key messages and impressions received in the few hours before and after the new moon, roughly 4-5 hours on either side. During this window of time, make space to be more meditative and pay attention to your thoughts, inspirations, psychic messages and so on, as these will tend to correspond to the archetype the new moon is birthing in at the time, and correlate to the growth themes we are meant to work with during the month.
At some point in time (after a few months) you can look through your log and begin to see a key pattern unfolding, which can stimulate further insight in terms of life purpose.
Overview
This Leo New Moon is the first Fire Moon since the two consecutive Aries New Moons last March and April, and the fire signs generally tend to initiate new sub-cycles of personal development; whatever new growth directives emerged last March and April may now be taken forward to a new level.
Leo is the archetype of creative self expression, which enables us to co-create our own reality, steer the ship of our own personal destiny, and in spiritual terms correlates to self-realisation and sovereignty. Seed impulses this month may bring new awareness about our life purpose, about who we are as individual unique beings, and what is ours to do for the greater good. Very often obstacles to sovereignty and creative self-expression can rise to the surface through life experiences to be tackled consciously; if we are lacking in self-love, we won’t be able to realise our true potential; if we doubt our creative abilities we can self-sabotage and so on.
The issue of lovelessness (and narcissism) is highlighted by Dark Moon Lilith [DML] in close conjunction to the Leo New Moon. DML represents emotional deficiencies that leave us feeling weak, and they are often connected with early childhood when we perhaps didn’t get enough positive mirroring from both parents and school teachers. Only when we are loving to ourselves does the channel to the Higher-Self open up.
This years Leo New Moon chart features 3 T-Squares and a Grand Kite formation, making this month highly energised with tension, and supported by beneficial harmonious energies that can help us through, as well as speed up personal growth. Let's have a closer look at the symbols in more detail to a get a sense of what is possible.
Chart cast for the Leo New Moon 16th Aug 2023. 10.38 BST/05.38 EDT
For a guide to the astrological symbols click here
Astro-Technicals:
(skip over if you are not familiar with the astro-jargon)
Conjunctions:
Saturn and Gonggong in Pisces
Quaoar and Pholus in Capricorn
Sedna and Mors-Somnus in Gemini
Varda and Icarus in Sagittarius
Makemake and Logos Zoë in Libra
Eris conjunct the North Node
Haumea conjunct the South Node
New Moon and Dark Moon Lilith in Leo
Squares and T-Squares
Ixion square Manwë
Pluto square the lunar nodes
Uranus opposing Typhon both square the New Moon
Vesta Opposing Varda & Icarus, all square to Mars in Virgo
Eris opposing Haumea, both square Pluto
Salacia opposing Makemake & Logos-Zoë, all square Quaoar & Pholus
Trines
A Grand Fire Trine featuring Eris, the North Node, Varda, Icarus, Dark Moon Lilith and the New Moon (with Vesta in Gemini this actually makes a Grand Kite)
A Grand Earth Trine featuring Uranus, Pluto and Mars
Yods
A Yod featuring Pluto, Neptune and the New Moon
This New Moon acts as a potent gateway to greater self understanding; it is the apex of a T-square with Uranus and Typhon, as well as part of the Grand Kite (more on that later).
General Overview
Pluto in Capricorn is still squaring the nodes, but the nodes themselves have moved from Scorpio/Taurus to Libra/Aries, which represents a significant shift in the way we are collectively evolving and initiates a new evolutionary characteristic that will last for about 18 months. Not only this, Eris has moved back into square with Pluto shaking things up in the world; something she was doing during the Covid period. Eris, the Goddess of chaos-wisdom and champion of natural justice is also in conjunction with the lunar North Node, energising Aries lessons connected to new journeys, assertion, standing up for what is right, and forging new pathways. We can expect to see more of this positively and negatively in the coming months.
Eris opposing Haumea makes a T-Square with Pluto in Capricorn, putting more pressure on our world systems as well as our personal reality, to ditch the old and make more space for the new. Of all the archetypes, Haumea is perhaps the most resonant with the vision of a New Earth in alignment with natural law, and Eris in Aries is taking the role of catalyst, firing up the human spirit and imbuing the collective with a drive toward greater freedom and a desire to level the playing field, by tackling such things as social inequality and the current systems that enable vast amounts of money to fall into just a few hands, while the majority are locked into forms of servitude.
Eris is not the only archetype shaking things up; Gonggong is also disrupting world structures on many levels, and Typhon in opposition to Uranus is adding yet more chaos-disruption to the mix. Chaos of course is not necessarily negative, although it can feel like a negative force when we resist needed change; out of chaos new things emerge.
The drive to heal, remediate and serve
Mars conjunct Mercury in Virgo provides quite a lot of personal energy and motivation toward self-improvement and optimisation; there is energy available to analyse and understand both personal issues and global issues this month so that we can initiate actions that can optimise aspects of our lives. Mars and Mercury form the apex of a T-Square with Vesta and Varda. These two goddess archetypes provide a great deal of impetus to upgrade our life approach to one orientated toward service to a greater good. This new orientation may begin with personal healing processes that once complete will level us up to be the change we want to see in the world. This might involve matching new information to a growing intuitive map of meaning and then taking action to either self-improve or serve others. For example, new resonant information may come to light that can then be utilised to improve our health or someone else’s.
Continuing high-frequency transmissions now activate past-life memory of pre-diluvial cultures and new awareness of humanity’s blueprints of the future
The ongoing T-Square with Salacia opposing Makemake & Logos-Zoë, with Quaoar & Pholus at the apex, provides an integration challenge. High frequency energy coming in via the current heightened solar activity in combination with a reduced planetary electromagnetic field, continues to activate an awakening of consciousness for many on the planet. Those starseed-wanderers with old connections to Atlantis and Lemuria may find themselves remembering old knowledge or reactivating connections to these past times in service to collective awakening; some of the old knowledge now returning.
Sedna’s recent ingress into Gemini is also another indication of both old knowledge returning to human awareness and new information being transmitted into the collective Akasha. Sedna’s orbit of nearly 11,000 years, which is almost half a great Yuga Cycle, highlights her as one of the record-keepers of the human story and legacy. Of all the new celestial bodies so far discovered, Sedna is one that travels furthest out from the sun into the Oort Cloud, and having been on a return orbit she is approaching her closest position to Earth. As Sedna activates through Gemini we can expect individuals to start receiving key new information pertinent to human evolution. Some of this will relate to our forgotten past, and some will relate to where we are headed in spiritual evolutionary terms. The human enterprise on Gaia is not just a biological development but more significantly a spiritual one; we are all spiritual beings engaging in the human experience in order to learn, grow and evolve as part of something much larger, and Sedna will choose specific souls to carry and disseminate new information about human evolution in the coming years. This new information could pertain to many different aspects such as new science, new medicine, new culture and new spirituality.
Sedna currently conjunct Mors-Somnus highlights her role in this current time period as one that supports collective awakening, and her transmissions in these first few years, at least until 2026, will for the most part be processed during sleep, and more easily accessed in altered states of consciousness.
The Grand Kite adds high energy for positive change but we must keep it balanced
A Grand Kite is essentially a Grand Trine activated by another archetype, in this case Vesta in Gemini. The Grand Fire Trine energises harmonious leaps forward into the new, in ways that can be quite speedy and at times effortless. Its energy helps to balance the conflicting and tense oppositions and T-Squares, which form the bedrock of this lunation. The New Moon itself forms part of this trine formation making it an inception point for potential and significant breakthroughs, and forward movement. It transmits a tremendous excitement, optimism, creativity and momentum this month. Don’t be surprised if big changes happen in your life on one level or another.
The Grand Kite essentially presents us with another evolutionary gateway or portal tied directly into the Leo New Moon. This is perhaps of more significance due to its time proximity to the annual Lion’s Gate Portal connected to the heliacal rising of the star Sirius on August the 8th.
The Lion's Gate Portal on the 8th of the 8th month (88) coincides with the alignment of the Sun in Leo with it's twin sun Sirius (we are thought, by the ancients, to be part of a dual-sun system with Sirius, which generates the cycle of the Yugas). This alignment with the number 8 (infinity) associated with endeavour and success through work, energises the Leo New Moon this year.
Vesta acts as a stabiliser for this intense and fast moving trine energy, helping us slow down just a little bit, to think things through before we take sudden inspired action. Varda conjunct the Galactic Centre is a potent transmitter, and she is conjunct Icarus fuelling him with high frequency stellar transmissions, which have to go somewhere or else he burn up and crash with energy overwhelm. An under-developed Icarus will tend to act too impulsively on intuitive impulses urging us to take action and make something happen. It is through methodical, reliable, and steady Vesta that we can find needed balance; Vesta teaches us to ground through sacred ritual, and can help us to slow down the intense energy now available and ground it into reality. We need to be able to step-down high visionary input from "above and beyond", and translate it into linear understandable ideas and strategies; through the left-brain we can temper the intuition with other perspectives that can help us implement higher-guidance in useful ways.
The North Node now in the sign of Aries for the next 18 months signifies renewed emphasis on taking action in our lives toward new experiences and new directions. It also means that we are now tasked with breaking free from the past and breaking the old patterns as we determine to move into new fresh life experiences. And while Eris conjoins the North Node, and Manwë squares Ixion, we can expect amplified energy and the activation of the Light-Warrior archetype. This is to say that Light-Workers may find themselves called to actively face, challenge and balance ‘dark’ low vibrational energy at this time in larger numbers.
Deepening Self-Inquiry leading to breakthroughs in awareness
Mercury in his home sign of Virgo is energised by a conjunction with Mars also in Virgo; there is a stronger drive than usual to understand patterns of behaviour or patterns operating within society in order to improve things. The Mars/Virgo conjunction is also making a Grand Earth Trine with Uranus and Pluto, while Uranus forms part of a T-Square with the New Moon; the drive to understand and improve is amplified by the Grand Trine energy and the evolutionary potency of Pluto, to generate liberating insight through Uranus square the New Moon.
This is especially true for anyone sincerely motivated to heal and transform at this time. In another way, a growing sense of crisis, whether that be the meta-crisis (over the threat of climate change, possible world war, civil war etc), the sense-making crisis (what do we truly know is true nowadays?), or the meaning-crisis (the western materialist drive to accumulate has left many bereft of any meaningful life context), is not only stimulating us to move beyond the confines of a socio-politically controlled narrative into taboo areas of inquiry, but is also moving us to find new meaning through a more active engagement with Divine Mystery; in other words it is dissolving the boundaries on reality set in place by science-materialism, inviting us to explore aspects of the spiritual in ways we might not have wanted to before.
The Season of Change
Although we have been seeing the breakdown of societal systems in recent years, it has at the same time felt considerably stagnant; there has been an inevitable resistance at the level of governance and rulership (both political and economic) and an increase in totalitarian style control, while collectively there hasn’t yet been any significant change or effective response. [This is not to overlook the significant responses being made by individuals and alternative style groups moving against the status quo]
This year in 2023 however, I am seeing many symbols heralding real change, now emerging within all of us. Fundamentally this change is occurring within each of us individually, relative to where we are in our own evolutionary context - its worth remembering that just one fundamental change in a persons life, like changing one's diet, generates a domino effect leading to other changes as well.
For some the season of change will induce crisis as a means to heal, grow and change; for others the completion of growth cycles will manifest as changes in lifestyle, new relationships, moving to new locations, and releasing an old way of life to embrace a new frequency of being; and yet for others they might experience radical shifts in consciousness.
I sense that the collective karmic momentum driving events is slowly turning in a new direction as more and more people quietly awaken to a new way of seeing the world; their place in the world and what is truly important from what is not.
If you’ve just started awakening, then expect deep healing processes to become more central to your life.
If you’ve been doing the healing work for some time, you may be called to service in some way.
If you’ve been actively in service to the whole, the pattern is changing and we can expect some pleasant surprises as new guides come in, new tasks are offered, and new roles are undertaken.
A Grand Earth Trine this month with Pluto, Uranus and Mars emphasises a 'green-light' for evolutionary changes that impact manifest reality. Powerful surprise shake-ups and changes are emphasised, which can lead to significant changes in physical reality. These disruptions serve to stimulate us to make adjustments in our lives, move toward remediation or service e.g. attend to health issues through lifestyle changes that optimise health, or shifting more toward service to other as a way to make a difference in the world. Sudden revelations about the world may also induce a desire to understand the deeper causes, especially linked to the inefficiency of our world systems, and an impulse toward making things better.
This Leo New Moon is highly energised toward unexpected breakthroughs and progress, due to it being the apex of both a Yod and a T-Square as well as being part of a Grand Kite formation. A new frequency level has been available since around March this year, and many may well have been consciously or unconsciously reaching for this new level; working through personal patterns in order to become a vibrational match to the new level of ascension now on offer. The recent Cancer Solstice and the 333 Rose Stargate Portal (as heralded by Magenta Pixie) gave us another opportunity to jump a little higher in frequency. This New Moon feels like a birth threshold; something new is going to come to many if not all of us in some way that relates specifically to life purpose, higher meaning, and creative self-actualisation; there is significant energy moving us all forward relative to our unique purpose for being here on Earth at this time. Whatever new life changes are meant to unfold for us individually in the next few years, are emergent right now on the subtle level, becoming ever more tangible and coherent within us.
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Aquila offers Self-realisation mentoring, Evolutionary Astrology, and Tarot sessions for those awakening to their true potential.
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