The luminaries, Sun and Moon, perfect their Leo conjunction just before Noon EDT, tomorrow. It will be a special New Moon, initiating a special opportunity for you to make a difference beyond your dreams. The Moon and its cycles show up in your life as an important part of your personal consciousness.
The best known of the Moon’s cycles is the one we can see, a lunation, the period of time from one New Moon to the next. The lunation that starts tomorrow will contain the beginnings of two other, longer, lunar cycles. Hence, the Leo New Moon will symbolically begin a month-long period, representing a favorable time to restart your personal consciousness on several levels, all at once.
Your personal consciousness has a public and a private side. Public consciousness is what others usually see when you are out amongst `em, usually during the light of day, attending to the worldly tasks or purposes that illuminate your public life. Public consciousness, therefore, corresponds to the Sun. Private consciousness is another breed of cat.
Like many cats, private consciousness is suited to the night. It comes forth in the dreams you have when you are asleep, when anything is possible, or in intimacy, possibly confounding or astonishing you. Because private consciousness often reflects back what originated during the day, it corresponds to the Moon.
Like the Moon, your private consciousness can go unobserved unless you make a special effort. The society that most often prevails during daylight rarely makes the same effort to educate the emotions as it does the intellect. Most of us are left to ourselves when it comes to the awareness, care and feeding of our emotional and psychological needs. Working with the lunar cycles can enhance your awareness of the Moon inside you and help you to integrate it with your Sun.
The transiting Moon (where Luna is now) lives somewhere inside you. Just as your public consciousness is aware of the solar seasons, your private consciousness feels the lunar cycles. The simple act of enlisting your public consciousness to check the phase and location of the Moon, and keeping track of the results, can increase your awareness of your feelings and how important they are. For example, the observed results of a New Moon frequently indicate favorable circumstances to begin something that corresponds to where the luminaries come together.
Leo, the location of tomorrow’s New Moon, is ruled by the Sun. A convergence of the luminaries in Leo is therefore a favorable indication to restart your private consciousness in conjunction with your public consciousness. It would be an appropriate time to start taking your sleeping dreams seriously, for example, by keeping a journal that includes the phase and placement of the Moon.
You might also find that accredited counselor friend of yours open to deferring payment in exchange for advice on how to get your emotions to better support your intent and aspirations. Working with the Leo New Moon to restart your consciousness of lunations will also inform and enhance your participation with the lunar nodes as they begin a new cycle of their own.
The lunar nodes are the two calculated points where the Moon’s orbit around Earth intersects with Earth’s orbit around the Sun, and they move around the zodiac in a peculiar way. In perpetual opposition, the points of luminary intersection are the points where eclipses take place, hence where the personal consciousness of the individual is transcended to a different level, merging with ‘the one’ and ‘the is’.
In between eclipses, the nodes symbolize the dynamics of polarity, cause and effect, both in relationships and in time, oscillating to and fro from one day to the next with a net retrograde motion, slowly waltzing backwards through the signs. As September begins, and within the cycle of the lunation beginning tomorrow, the lunar nodes will change signs for the first time since March of 2011, offering the opportunity to escalate your practice of integrating private and public consciousness.
Nearly a year and a half ago, the lunar nodes danced in through the back door of Sagittarius and Gemini, bringing eclipses to the mutable axis where air feeds fire, fire warms air, and intellect confronts intuition. In the interim, your purpose for being here was confronted by a persistent challenge to being at all, with all of us repeatedly called to rise, and rise again. Now, that rising cycle will yield to a collective task and worldly purpose of grounding and flow on a fixed axis from Scorpio to Taurus.
When the nodes reach the back porch of Scorpio and Taurus, all of us at once will be challenged to take what we have learned from persistently rising to the occasion, and apply it to address whether sentience can long continue to animate a material framework on this planet. That challenge, in turn, will elevate your participation from the monthly lunar cycle to a long term cycle in relationship to others and to posterity.
Fortunately, the Leo New Moon begins a lunation that will include a third cycle of interim length. Literally and symbolically it bridges the gap from personal to collective by addressing the process in which individual awareness incurs responsibility to self and to others. That third cycle concerns the mean lunar apogee, otherwise known as Black Moon Lilith.
The mean lunar apogee, like the lunar nodes, is a calculated point. It is the mean point of the lunar orbit furthest removed from Earth, whether the Moon is there or not. Consistent with the Sumerian myth from which the mean lunar apogee derives its common name, the astrological meaning of Black Moon Lilith has to do with removal to a distance as an act of conscience.
Just as the legendary character Lilith took responsibility for her awareness by acting to distance herself from a male-supremacist paradise, the mean lunar apogee expresses in your life as integrity and conscience. Conscience, in turn, is what bridges the integrated personal consciousness to others, individually and collectively. Without conscience, we would be like any other social organism, incapable of taking individual responsibility, and unable to practice individual integrity as an example from which members of the collective may learn and change. The opportunity to become the conscientious agent for collective change, a uniquely human potential, is what the new cycle of Black Moon Lilith will afford.
In the last days of December 2011, the mean lunar apogee entered Taurus in direct motion. Since that time the astrological expression of your conscience has been moving slowly through the fixed earth of grounded values. Now, carrying those values, Black Moon Lilith is approaching a new cycle in the mutable air of Gemini, trading places with the lunar south node, and all contained in the Leo lunation that starts tomorrow.
From Gemini, the mean lunar apogee will be primed to express itself. The communication, however, will not be received from a calculated point in outer space. Nor will you be able to depend upon any collective entity for conscientious behavior. An appeal to take responsibility for awareness and act in integrity can only originate from within the individual, because that’s where our dilemma originated.
Fragmentation within results in alienation without, and separates us all, in turn, from our collective responsibility to posterity and life. You are in a position to conjoin and restart your personal, inner Sun and Moon, even as the actual luminaries merge to start a new cycle in the sky. You can do simple, practical things to become more whole and aware. You can act on your awareness with responsibility, and inspire others to do the same.
In relationship we can interface with the transcendent through practical means, purposefully addressing cause, and conscientiously taking responsibility for effect. But it starts with you, restarting your personal consciousness on every level, right up to where there is only ‘is’, and ‘one with’. That is what makes tomorrow’s New Moon an opportunity to make a difference, even beyond your dreams.
Offered In Service
Len is available for astrology readings. You can contact him at lenwallick [at] gmail [dot] com.
thank you Huffy, I infact emailed her the link to this article so she can read for herself.
Smack dab in-between the lovelies, stormi! Makes ya extra special!
Thanks for the link on the patterns of eclipses, awordedgewise! I read through it. It was very informative. Lots of good information for me … And I think I read somewhere that eclipses were pretty important? 😉
how funny, mine’s the 26th.
Oh, stormi (via way of Paolo)—Ditto! My lovely cousin is August 25, I’m August 30, and my best friend is September 8 … and that sounds like all of us too! Oh, the curse of the enlightened, eh? 😉
Paolo, I’m so sorry that your Scorpio sis suffered such abuse. Hope that she’ll be able to regain trust and confidence in herself soon. When people behave in a gratuitously unpleasant way, I find it helps to remember that such people are acting from a really wounded place. I had a pretty nasty, gratuitous attack from someone recently (an ex student), and to be honest, I stilll feel angry – but another part of me is able to let it go when I realise that in the end, the attack isn’t personal, even if it feels that way – it’s projected unhappiness.
“She will never admit to needing protection and never ask for help. But they need it badly… they need good decent people around them who always have their best interests at heart… sensitive to a fault, absorptive to her detriment … She is learning a balance, because if they don’t, it’s downhill all the way for them. They have the ability to create more boundaries and psychic walls than anyone, one of the most beautiful and deeply compassionate signs.”
— sounds like some virgos i know. all the best!
thanks Katie Vee and Stormilarue, I will tell her and that will make her feel great. Maybe I’ve been an over protective brother, but here’s a secret about Scorpios knowing her so well. She will never admit to needing protection and never ask for help. But they need it badly. I do it gently and never undermine her. But they need good decent people around them who always have their best interests at heart. I find her to be sensitive to a fault, absorptive to her detriment, and she could find herself around people who work out their power trips on her because they are resentful of her effortlessness and regenerative grace. She is learning a balance, because if they don’t, it’s downhill all the way for them. They have the ability to create more boundaries and psychic walls than anyone, one of the most beautiful and deeply compassionate signs.
I found this little tutorial on eclipses – and the nodes – very helpful, and thought I would share it. Much of the info is repetitive of what we’ve previously learned here at PW.
http://www.earthview.com/tutorial/patterns.htm
Sublime as always Sir Len. We had much rain last night and this morning, and the rainbows have definitely been appearing all day for me. After losing some fall work last week, I gained it back and possibly even more today, taken as a blessing of new moon wishes and much inner growth of my own worth and work.
For the last 5 nights I have had long intense dreams of men I know, not perverse, but sweetly pleasant, with at least 3 of them related to my public consciousness. Also today I was reconnected with an old school friend, potentially relating to future collaborations. I take this all as favorable indications indeed, as the last year and a half has most definitely been the most challenging in Being here.
How interesting Paolo, I too had a scorpio friend who had a similar occurrence happen recently. They also chose to further distance themselves as a result, in healing I know, but having yet to hear from them again (if ever), I can only wish them, and your sister, a stronger sense of integrity and conscience from the process.
♥☮♫
Paolo, you got a wise lil’ sis! I wish her luck with her situation.
Dear Len, my computer time is very intermittent but I wanted to thank you for a really informative piece. My little sister is a Scorpio and she said to me something so beautiful. She said that “the eclipses are like a rain shower that clean and wash you inside and out. Depending on your journey and willingness to change, the cleaning can be soft and gentle or like swimming in rapids.” She also commented on the desolate isolation Saturn in the 12th house brings at times. She had a rough patch these past few months, esp recently with Mars. When I asked her how she is now, she said somewhat somberly that “as one prepares for something new (nodes change and Scorpio eclipse) after being with such potent 12th house energy emphasis, it is like entering a cave that you think you will simply turn around and come out of. Instead, it becomes a long tunnel, and that as you are so deep inside it alone, it is actually better to keep going in because you will emerge on the other side of it in a place and landscape that is at once new and completely fresh. *Almost* everything and everyone has left your life. One has in fact reincarnated into a new dimension of being.” She suffered an incredible injustice recently by an anonymous person to top it off, fueling a perception about her that was completely and utterly disgusting. Fortunately she had the support she needed that this slander merely fell off. But it was still hard on her to go through.
Oh, Len. Wow. Just WOW. So many wonderful things to ruminate over. Will definitely be reading and re-reading this post.
Len, this may be the best piece of writing I’ve seen from you. Unfortunately I don’t have time to read all of it this morning, though the first 4 paragraphs were most tantalizing! Look forward to coming back this evening and finishing it.
Meanwhile, this was the MOST insistent New Moon! It was as if every opaque thing turned into translucent obsidian for about half an hour. Curious.
More later. zoomzoom,
M
Len- your comment below on the lunar nodes is worthy of becoming an article unto itself, perhaps for the next round of eclipses. Bringing in the perspectives of Vedic and Evolutionary Astrology are useful and mind expanding in this arena, thanks for that.
Thank you so much Len! I’ll work from this, remembering at all time, um, uh,….oh! I know waitwait I’ll find it……..!!Eclipses!!!
lol and thank you again. wonderful wonderful words to work from. I am much obliged.
Len,
Now it makes sense. This with the progression reading you recently gave me made both click. Thank you so much for reading (and writing) things the way you do.
Thank you for this sublime piece, dear Len. As Jude says “making a decision to filter everything through love — heart chakra — makes our steps sure and purposeful”. Right now it feels as if I have a choice between continuing to live in fear and anxiety, or embracing another way of being with things, that is loving and trusting, living more in present time. Though it’s hard, cos the mind continues to go where it has always gone all its life, and doesn’t give up its negative spirals easily. But your words help strengthen my resolve.
aword: Thank you for your question. The first three words about the lunar nodes are: (1)Eclipses (2) eclipses (3) ECLIPSES. Oh, and eclipses. Eclipses are a big deal. The two brightest objects in our sky, opposing (lunar eclipse) or in conjunction (solar eclipse) lining up exactly with the Earth, casting a shadow on either the Moon (lunar eclipse) or the Earth (solar eclipse). Eclipses take place only at (or within spitting distance of) the lunar nodes. Therefore nodes are a big deal. Next, note what bkoehler wrote below: “portals where one level of of consciousness leads to another level” – yessss, be! Or what Wandering Yeti wrote a couple years back, referring to the lunar nodes as a cosmic “navel”. The lunar north node is where the lunar orbit takes the Moon above the ecliptic. The lunar south node is where the lunar orbit takes the Moon below the ecliptic.
Vedic astrologers consider the nodes to be of utmost importance, referring to them as Chayya Grahas (which translates as “shadow planets”, as i understand it). The lunar north (or Rahu) is the “head” of a dragon or celestial serpent, denoting dharma. The lunar south (or Ketu) is the “tail” of the dragon/serpent and denotes karma. To quote Vedic astrologer Komilla Sutton, the nodes are the “invisible thread” that connects one lifetime to the next.
Evolutionary astrologers also consider the lunar nodes to be important in a manner similar (but not quite the same) as Vedic astrologers, having to do with what you bring in and what you are looking to work out.
Because the nodes are always opposed, their involvement with relationship issues is unavoidable. Various kinds of polarity are also implicitly included in the interpretation of the nodes.
The lunar nodes take 19+ years to where they were when you were born. Hence, they return in reversed (transiting North conjunct natal South) position every 9+ years. It’s just like a transiting planet returning to conjoin its position on your natal chart, closing one era and starting another having to do with the nature of the nodes and their location.
Oh, did i mention eclipses?
Please let me know if that works for you or not. If not, i’ll take another shot.
But don’t forget eclipses!
Len, thank you for your thank you. I have just stepped back in here for a moment having done some exploring and wondering if you have any words to assist with a learning moment.
Being currently interested in the Nodes due to your today’s post, I noticed that it appeard I would have a “true node return” sometime soon. In plotting that out, I discovered that it is actually not until January 2014 that transiting nodes conjunct natal Nodes (although they move on rapidly immediately after having taken quite some time to move through Scorpio.)
What might I consider about Self and/or the world as I consider the idea of a conjunction of transiting Node and natal Node? Still working on the meaning of Nodes, clearly.
I might add that my personal chart is quite interesting for the day of the Node Conjunction with DML herself still in the mix – close enough to call her in-opposition to the Sun exact on natal Venus as well as Pluto/Venus on natal Mars and Uranus, bless him, still hovering on natal Moon/Eris.
I much appreciate if you have time for brief reminders/teaching on the Nodes, the significance/hierarchy of other aspects in relationship to this and what ‘window of opportunity’ opens when transiting Nodes r on natal Nodes?
Thank you.
DivaCarla: Thank you for your follow-up comment. It is deeply appreciated. It appears as though you are doing some very deep work. It is very gratifying to know that my service has helped with your work.
Len, I hope you take it as a compliment that I read you more than once. I have had to read everything more than once this week, so I believe the planets themselves, not your writing, have turned down the volume on my mind, and turned up my other receptors. I am in the midst of transformation so rapid that I hardly recognize myself from one day to the next. I believe your report describes that influence well, especially as I gather Black Moon Lilith is involved–yes, a fourth reading.
Three weeks ago I was making art about Lilith, and this week she’s exposing her dark and tangled roots to the sun. Blinking. And beautiful.
aword: Thank you for the joy of knowing my service is useful to you. You do seem to have grasped the spirit of the impending lunar transitions.
Chief Niwots Son: Thank you for the photograph of the Mars retrograde, which, in addition, helps illustrate the difference between sidereal and tropical astrology.
Mars Retrograde:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120809.html
A great photograph of Mars’ journey past the fixed stars.
Thank you, Len. Your focus on the Moon’s path and her relationship to the Sun and then to our inward/outward “knowledge” makes the Moon ‘useful’ today in a way I had not noticed prior. Her movements seems to pass by each month round and round so quickly that I don’t normally Feel her passing through her phases. And so I am grateful to you for this moment wherein you offer the idea of slowing down and acknowledging her, (and her nodes, and her other forms) and in so doing, allowing for a moment of attunement, of self to time, of self to self.
Bringing DML into the scene is also profoundly about heightening Feeling, yet in such a way that I am no longer disconnected to the larger whole but rather I am connected from a safe distance on my own terms, in my own way, in my own time.
No doubt she offers Perspective.
You have offered rich nourishment for my Being today, Len. Much more than I can put in words here, or that I can adequately thank you for. And so I will indeed take this moment to re-calabrate, re-group, re-start something deep, something I will find if I allow my day and my night to speak (to each other) and to be One.
Jude: You are so very kind. Thank you. Living with my own profound ignorance makes it difficult for me to envision how my work could possibly be profound. But i will gratefully accept your compliment because you are my superior in wisdom and writing, and as evidence that my work is showing some small progress.
DivaCarla: Thank you for your comment. i will strive to improve what i write to make it more understandable for your mind (and so you will not have to read it more than once). i will do everything i can to serve you better. i’m grateful that my words were accessible to you on the visceral and intuitive levels.
be: Thank you for your kind words and resonant expansion on the theme. Your generous cognition is exceeded only by your erudition.
Morgana: Congratulations on your nuptuals. It appears that you selected a good date and time to enter into matrimony with clear eyes and a clear head. Moving from courtship to marriage in synchrony with the nodes moving from the Sagittarius-Gemini axis to the Scorpio-Taurua axis also seems to be a good case of synchronization. The implications? It appears that you are living them far better than i could further explain them. Thank you so much for your words.
Chief Niwots Son: Thank you for your comment. It gives me joy to know that my words have been of service to you. Best wishes on the elevation of your work.
“An appeal to take responsibility for awareness and act in integrity can only originate from within the individual, because that’s where our dilemma originated.”
Thanks Len- those words hit the mark for me. And news of Black Moon Lilith entering Gemini set this Twin ringing like a Bell. I have been offered the opportunity to communicate deeply within my professional work, and these two themes twine together as a confirmation of other messages received. Thank you.
So beautifully written, Len, and I am taking your words to heart even though I don’t completely understand the implications. This new moon is especially personal for me: I am to marry my beloved tomorrow at 1:15pm EDT. Your reference to the lunar nodes of a year and a half ago? This was the time when my beloved and I first became a couple. Our journey together since that time has been “interesting,” to say the least. On a simple level, we are acutely aware of how our partnership affects both our family (me, Libra sun/4th, with Lilith just 3 degrees away and Pluto standing guard at the door of the 4th/IC) and the collective (he, Aquarius sun/12th with 12th house stellium). Intense times.
Whoa Len, this is a LOT to take in! You’re saying we’ve got a month to get re-oriented to this triple phase of development? Talk about evolution man, this is amazing astrology. I’m thinking of these nodal positions now as little portals where one level of consciousness leads to another level and that the “0” degree Gemini Eclipse in May was preparing us for Black Moon Lilith’s influence coming any moment now. Well I need some time to study this situation.
Having had the Dane Rudhyar book “An Astrological Mandala” already out earlier for a comment to Amanda’s blog, I now look to see that the symbol for the New Moon tomorrow is a Rainbow after a storm. This symbol in the Bible referred to the Covenant between God and Noah, and Rudhyar furthers it to symbolize the link between the divine and the self. In a way, this sounds much like what you are telling us about the merging of the private consciousness with the public consciousness. Rudhyar quotes H. P. Blavatsky’s supposed last words “Keep the Link unbroken”, and that we “need to maintain a state of open communication between the Sky and the Earth within our total being. . ” Perfect job for Gemini.
Well, it certainly explains all the activity that’s been going on in Gemini lately. It give more clarity to Venus’ occultation of the Sun at the same time the Moon was occulting Pluto. At that time, Venus and Sun and Chaos and Hermes were opposite the Great Attractor, whose pretty far out there, much like Lilith is metaphorically. Based on what you have revealed today, surely one’s conscience and integrity will be able to make one giant step for mankind during this time between eclipses and by the next New Moon. I’m willing to give it a go!
be
Len, I love your astrological writing. This one took three readings. I hope it is simply something I can’t understand with my mind, and I got it with my soul, and my body. All my mind knows is that this New Moon in Leo is within seconds of my natal Midheaven which is exactly conjunct Pluto. It’s primed for serious stepping up and out. No excuses.
Profound, my dear, welcome “how to” directions in a chaotic period. As you have written about so beautifully in prior days, making a decision to filter everything through love — heart chakra — makes our steps sure and purposeful. Thank you for another truly helpful post, offered in service and received in gratitude.