11:27 pm  AHST  11/12/2023
   1:27 am    PST  11/13/2023 
   4:27 pm   EST  11/13/2023
   9:27 pm   GMT 11/13/2023

When I first looked at the chart for this month’s New Moon in Scorpio, I said quietly under my breath, “oh my god…”. Yes, indeed, it is a chart that gives one pause.

First of all the Sun and Moon in Scorpio, the most intense of all the water signs, and arguably perhaps the most powerful sign in the zodiac, are conjoined with Mars in Scorpio, one of the sign’s rulers. And then in opposition to them is Uranus in Taurus, opposed exactly at the midpoint between the Sun/Moon and Mars. Intense!

Uranus here equals the unexpected, the bolt out of the blue, the impetuous, impulsive, the unpredictable. But in the fixed sign of Taurus, it refuses to budge in its desire to awaken us with its intent, whatever that may be. Ultimately, Uranus points us to the larger truth of our lives, which may be staring us in the face, and yet we are pretending it’s not even there, the elephant in the room. It’s something unusual to be sure, something creative. But its opposition to Mars in particular can bring emotional volatility and snap judgements, and can push our lower brain impulses. 

Scorpio is just as fixed as Taurus, in water rather than earth element. Fixed water tends to be like ice, cold, unmoving deep feelings such as resentment and revenge. In an already war-like environment, this New Moon does not bode well for things like peace talks, or cease fires.

But larger visions are working their ways in the underground water table of our collective psyche. Neptune, the planetary archetype of the deep oceanic undercurrents that all humans and all living things share, is still in its own sign of Pisces. It’s forming a solid trine (harmonious 120˚ angle) to the Sun/Moon/Mars conjunction, which also includes Ceres, just 2 degrees away from Mars. Neptune here is working behind the conscious mind field of daily life to strongly accentuate the connections between the opposites, the similarity between Arab and Jew, between Russian and Ukrainian, blurring the lines between opposing viewpoints. While people around the globe demonstrate and call for peace, those who can too easily push a button or order armies to do their bidding are still enacting punishment, revenge, and destruction, while the media calls for adherence to the ridiculous “rules of war” as if it’s a game we all agreed to play. Neptune is the deep knowing underneath the violence that using war to solve things is idiotic, and it’s our love and connections to each other that will be what saves us.

Ceres, the asteroid of the Great Mother archetype, in Scorpio holding Mars’ hand, is a mitigating influence here, bringing the need for us to recognize nurturance as an essential quality of life, that actions of war which destroy crops, family structures, hospitals, homes are those that destroy the web of life that holds us all together.

Saturn, ruler of karma, limitation and Time, forms a square (90˚ angle) to Mercury, which is in hopeful Sagittarius. Again, not boding well for negotiations, we’re just not at that place yet. The negative side of Mercury in Sagittarius is political posturing, which we’ve certainly seen enough of. Saturn’s influence here limits the breadth and scope of Mercury in Sag. Saturn in Pisces is asking us to look beyond our traditional ideas of religion, to what we all have in common, rather than what separates us. Are we ready to hear that message?

We must not lose sight of the vision of a world that is undergoing dramatic exposure of the dark substratum of society, a precursor to making millennial changes in the ways we all live together. Neptune’s important role in this New Moon reminds me of a very important powerful upcoming astrological signature in the heavens, the Uranus/Pluto (revolution/transformation) trine, which I’ve written about previously.  Over 100 years ago, this signature was a time (the 1920s) that revolutionized the ways humans live on the planet. And in 2026-2028 it will happen again. This century, the return of that signature includes Neptune (collective vision) in a magic triangle, just as it’s forming in its beginning stages in this New Moon chart, though the aspects are not yet close to exact. (Note the similarity of the three planets’ angles to the chart above). With Neptune in the mix, there is a global emphasis on our spiritual and humanitarian ways of solving problems, rather than the old ways of using force and domination, “might makes right”. These three outer planets move very slowly, but inexorably denote societal cycles of change.

Interestingly, these outer three planets formed a Grand Trine to each other during the period 1770-1773, just as the revolutionary movements were brewing in the US and France. Grand trines are the most harmonious aspects that planets can make astrologically, and since these are slow-moving outer planets, it takes years to fully manifest after their signature has faded. But they always herald major changes in the global paradigm.  So, as astrologers keep their eyes on the outer planets to look into what’s possible, remember that essentially everything runs in cycles, what goes up, must come down, and vice versa. We know for sure we can no longer sustain life on this planet in the ways we have been living, and eventually, at whatever cost, change is inevitable. But the signature of these three planets brings an upgrade in collective awareness, in working to create what can be a planet of cooperation, embracing rather than erasing our differences.