Virgo New Moon

The New Moon in Virgo is at the turning of the season, initiating a new lunar cycle one week before the Equinox. It’s natural to take stock during this time of the year, making adjustments regarding what’s been effective and not, preparing for the changes of the season ahead and what we want to accomplish during the rest of the year. The internal, analytical, and discerning earthiness of Virgo is ideal for discriminating between choices and not only judging how well we have been using our time but also deducing ways to improve processes and become more pragmatic with our focus and problem solving. While the Virgo New Moon on 14 September can facilitate becoming more grounded within the details of our circumstance, it’s connection to larger astrological cycles also indicate it can be unusually helpful regarding the bigger picture of larger story arcs that will be developing over the years ahead.

The Virgo New Moon is separating from a flowing trine with Jupiter in Taurus and applying toward a flowing trine with Uranus and an opposition with Neptune in Pisces. Since the lunation is connecting Jupiter and Uranus it points toward the much larger meaning of the Jupiter and Uranus cycle which will be a dominant theme of 2024 due to the conjunction between Jupiter and Uranus that will take place on 20 April 2024. There is also a connection with the much vaster meaning of the Saturn and Neptune cycle which will be a dominant theme especially in 2025 and 2026, since the recent Full Moon in Pisces was conjoining Saturn, the Virgo New Moon is opposite Neptune, and Mercury, the ruler of the lunation, is stationing direct in range of a wide opposition with Saturn in Pisces. While it’s been notable how much reality and societal systems have been changing in recent years, as well as how much Saturn and Neptune have already begun bending reality since being in Pisces together, there will be an even greater acceleration of change in the years ahead as Saturn and Neptune form a conjunction in Aries while Pluto enters Aquarius and Uranus enters Gemini. Saturn and Neptune coming together in the years ahead will require immense adaptation. The Virgo New Moon is ideal for centering within your desires and values, imagining what you want to create and who you want to be as the currents of change rapidly speed up in the years ahead.

The Virgo New Moon is potent for envisioning change and initiating forward progress due to Mercury stationing direct at 8º11’ Virgo on 15 September while also returning to visibility as a Morning Star. Messages from Hermes will saturate the astrological landscape, making it a particularly powerful time to practice mindfulness while also paying close attention to daily synchronicities, passing omens, dream images, and any other forms of messages you receive. Combined with the invigorating and visionary trine aspects between the Virgo New Moon with Jupiter and Uranus, the lunation can not only aid in recovery and renewal, but help open awareness to wider fields of pathways that can be explored and developed for a long time to come. Since it will take about a week for Mercury to start making significant forward progress, Mercury’s tending of the Virgo New Moon is best suited for contemplation and discernment that eventually will lead to meaningful and impactful forward progress. This means you may need to embrace the meaning that can be found within the pause for reflection before you make the desired movement forward.

Mercury stationed retrograde on 23 August in range of a trine with Uranus and then passed through a trine with Jupiter on 4 September just before becoming reanimated by the Sun on 6 September. Mercury moving retrograde through the celestial underworld is always a potent time for changing habits and repatterining, yet this particular Mercury retrograde phase has been unusually supportive for unlocking new perspectives on innovative directions to pursue and new levels of development that can be achieved in the year ahead. The Virgo New Moon is timed exactly with Mercury emerging from the underworld to deliver the message you need to hear regarding the present and its relationship with longterm storylines. Listen, and remember that Mercury is more about being in between meaning and destinations than definitive conclusions and end points, and that having to accept and hold paradoxical dilemmas is part of the modus operandi of the star of Hermes.

The New Moon forming an opposition with Neptune has multivalent meaning. While it could coincide with some disorienting confusion regarding the best way forward or imagined fears of what could go wrong, the influence of Neptune could also bring a wave of inspired movement that can lift you out of an individualized perspective into feeling the way your life and choices are part of a much larger, collective web of interconnected influences. The opposition between the lunation and Neptune also means that we are also close to the dead center of Neptune’s retrograde passage through Pisces that began on 30 June when Neptune stationed retrograde at 27º41’ Pisces, and will ultimately end when Neptune stations direct on 6 December at 24º53’ Pisces. Neptune will reach the midpoint of its retrograde passage when forming an exact opposition with the Virgo Sun on 19 September. Combined with the trine aspects between the Virgo Moon with Jupiter and Uranus, the opposition with Neptune can help with getting serious and realistic about turning your dreams into reality.

Neptune’s opposition with the lunation emphasizes the importance of soberly assessing your ambitious dreams, making a practical analysis of time and energy available before implementing plans and putting in the necessary work to make it happen. While being realistic is important, be careful of how you define realistic. Simultaneously working with Jupiter and Uranus means welcoming opportunities to make breakthroughs and disrupt the status quo, embracing experimentation and inventive change no matter how unsettling it feels. Making a leap in development can be scary, and so it will be important to distinguish the fears and anxieties that are more about shedding old skins and changing patterns that feel comfortable but have now been outgrown. The Virgo New Moon will reward courageous action taken on well developed plans.

Once Mercury is direct they will complete a third and final trine with Jupiter in Taurus during the waxing half of the present lunar cycle, forming an exact trine with Jupiter on 25 September. The beneficial trine that will be slowly perfecting between Mercury and Jupiter will boost efforts for growth and help stabilize the changes taking shape in the lunar cycle ahead. It will be worth considering if there are particular storylines tied to the trine aspects that have been forming between Mercury and Jupiter during the past month: the first was on 9 August when Mercury was direct and the second was on 4 September when Mercury was retrograde. Any plans that have been slow in development or beset by setbacks can gain solid traction as Mercury moves forward into a harmonious trine with Jupiter over the course of the next week and a half. Claim the agency available to make it happen.

In terms of finding one’s center, there is a synchronicity that Mercury is stationing direct close to the projected degree of the circumpolar star Thuban in Draco the Dragon, the ancient pole star that was placed at the point of northern stillness around which all of the stars rotated four thousand years ago. Though Thuban’s place at the northern pole has been taken by Polaris today, as a circumpolar star that eternally rotates around the center point, never setting into the celestial netherworld, Thuban remains part of an ancient Dragon who guards the central treasure of finding your true path and following the lodestar of your own essential becoming. Or as Rainer Maria Rilke famously wrote in letter #8 to a young poet, “perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.” Indeed, by following Rilke’s advice in letter #8 to “hold to the difficult” rather than taking the easy way out, we may discover “that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful.”

In contrast to Mercury coming to the end of its retrograde passage, Venus in Leo is beginning to pick up speed and forward progress after finally ending her forty day retrograde journey on 3 September. Although Venus is no longer retrograde, we are only at the beginning of sorting through all of the lessons learned from her underworld passage, only at the beginning of embodying a newfound presence of desire and value that has been informed by our experiences during her retrograde passage that began on 22 July. As a result, although the Virgo New Moon is not forming a major aspect with Venus, it is initiating a new lunar cycle that will be immensely influenced by whatever insights, revelations, and understanding we gained during the past three months of Venus moving back and forth through Leo.

During the Virgo New Moon, Venus in Leo will be shining brightly as a Morning Star, reaching her phase of maximum brightness at the same time as the Virgo New Moon. Venus will form her third and final square with Jupiter in Taurus on September 16 a day before reaching maximum brightness as a Morning Star on 17 September. In contrast to Venus illuminating the darkness and liminal twilight before dawn, Jupiter retrograde in Taurus is shining brightly at night during the midnight hour. The square aspect between Jupiter and Venus is unusually important due to them being in antiscia to one another, forming their midpoint on the world axis at zero degrees of tropical Cancer. The symbolism of antiscia means they are in degrees of equal power and light, and while it mitigates the difficulty of their square aspect, it also accentuates their capacity for incredibly powerful manifestation of creative vision and work in the world.

The interplay between Venus and Jupiter in fixed signs will provide solid ground upon which to build with the intentions, choices, and actions commenced with the Virgo New Moon. Jupiter is in the earthy domicile of Venus as well as in his own bounds, giving the star of Zeus increased capacity to not only fertilize growth with Venus but also steward further development with wise focus on longterm stability and success. Venus previously formed her first square aspect with Jupiter in the sequence on 11 June when both planets were moving direct, and formed her second square aspect with Jupiter when she was retrograde on 22 August. The entire passage of Mercury retrograde in Virgo has transpired since the last square between Venus and Jupiter, and so there is something significant related to Mercury retrograde in Virgo that is informing the events corresponding with the final square between Venus and Jupiter. Ideally, whatever research, inner work, reflection, recovery, or repatterining you have undergone with Mercury retrograde has brought you to the place you need to be to make the most of the opportunities presented by Venus and Jupiter. Venus and Jupiter can incite extreme expenditures in pursuit of pleasure and desire, so allow the grounding influence of Mercury stationing direct in Virgo to help you discern the places to take on more versus the places you need to be careful to not take on too much.

Virgo 3 Decan

The New Moon will regenerate the third decan of Virgo, associated with the Ten of Pentacles card illustrated above by Pamela Colman Smith. Fitting for an image of a family enjoying the fruits of their ancestral legacy, the third face of Virgo is ruled by Mercury and Venus. T. Susan Chang in 36 Secrets connected the Ten of Pentacles with the study and practice of magic, ancestral communication, “an ability to finalize the process from raw material to usable product, a through understanding of monetary infrastructures,” and “the judicious use of rest and silence.” Austin Coppock in his book on the decans 36 Faces connected the image of “the pensive nature of the elder” in the Ten of Pentacles card with a fundamental question this face asks about wealth: “What, given the fate of all created things, is truly valuable?”

Considering the fate of all created things fits with the image for the third decan of Virgo in Henrich Cornelius Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy: “a white woman and a dead or old man, leaning on a stick; these have the significations of weakness, illness, the loss of members, the destruction of trees, and the plundering of the earth.” A decan of decay and death, old texts such as the Picatrix and Liber Hermetis contain images of mummification, while Abraham Ibn-Ezra pictured a woman praying with leprous hands.

Austin Coppock in 36 Faces ascribed the image of “The Sarcophagus” to the third decan of Virgo, writing that “the spirit gazes upon its inevitable separation from matter here, contemplating the consequences of its brief union.” Coppock stated that the third face of Virgo “has the power to break the pride of all created things by showing them their inevitable end,” yet through facing this inevitability “it grants far reaching sight . . . the ability to look beyond the present, seeing consequences as clearly as actions.” It’s a decan that asks us to come to terms with the legacy and value we wish to leave behind for our future ancestors, a face of learning to embrace the moment due to the death that awaits all of our loves in the end.

The capacity to hold a perspective considering the longterm consequences of the choices we are making fits well with the Hellenistic text the 36 Airs ascribing the hearth-goddess Hestia to the third face of Virgo. Hestia, “mistress of ever-burning fire” who dwells in the center of the house, is the goddess of the central hearth found in private homes, sacred temples, and public gathering centers for the community. Like the purifying nature of the fire she tends, Hestia possesses the focus necessary to stay true to the essential value we wish to invest into our relationships, work, and community. Like the ancestral legacy pictured in the Ten of Pentacles, Hestia’s devotion has roots in an ancient lineage of sisterhood we can draw from to bolster our own faith in the unknown to come. Hestia holds within the sacred flame of her heart a moral compass impossible to manipulate or distract away from her path of love and service. Within the darkness of the Virgo New Moon, follow the guidance of the life force flowing through your heart just like Hestia devotes herself to her flame.

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References

Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius. (2021). Three Occult Books of Philosophy. Translated by Eric Purdue. Inner Traditions.

Chang, T. Susan. (2021). 36 Secrets: A Decanic Journey through the Minor Arcana of the Tarot. Anima Mundi Press.

Coppock, Austin. (2014). 36 Faces: The History, Astrology and Magic of the Decans. Three Hands Press.

Rilke, Rainer Maria. (2004). Letters to a Young Poet. Translated by M.D. Herter Norton. WW Norton & Company.