New Moon in Sagittarius

This is later today, the 29th November, around 12:15 GMT.

Sagittarius is about hope, optimism, open vistas, new possibilities. Moving forward, basically.

And moving forward looks like the theme of this new moon all right. Getting on with life and moving into the future with a renewed sense of purpose, even though you're still reeling and you'd rather lie in bed with the covers over your head.

I think this past November has ripped our faith in business-as-usual from us. Everything has changed, right? There are new realities to be attended to now, and there's no going back.

Helpfully, the way forward and the way backward are clearly mapped out for us here. This new moon tightly squares the north and south nodes, which are about the path of growth (north node) vs. the path of stagnation (south node).

The north node has been in Virgo for the past year. This means the path forward is about intense pragmatism. Attending to daily reality and doing what needs doing, however routine and mundane it may feel. Staying grounded and focused on the little tasks and details.

The south node is conjunct Neptune in Pisces. This means the path backward is toward delusion, fantasy, misguided romanticism, self pity, addiction, emotional ungroundedness. Drowning your sorrows or trying to evade reality.

It's easy to illustrate! Way forward:

Way backward:

Easy to illustrate, but maybe not so clear-cut in reality. Having Neptune on the south node means we are all dealing with some level of delusion these days. It's easy to think you're on the right track when you're actually on the exact wrong one. There is a lot of misinformation and self-deception swirling around.

This is where Saturn in Sagittarius can help us. At best, this is about honesty, integrity, walking your talk and having a solid plan. It's about having a moral compass that helps you distinguish right from wrong, truth from falsity.

Saturn is loosely conjunct Mercury in Sagittarius for this new moon, which will hopefully be a sobering influence on our minds and speech. Sagittarius can be bombastic and rigidly ideological – and that's a danger here. And it's something we've all had enough of at this point, lord knows.

Luckily though, the dispositor of all these planets in Sagittarius is Jupiter in Libra – sign of balance, fairness, social grace and seeing the other's point of view.

What this means is, reciprocity and moderation are favoured. Fact-checking and thinking before you rush to judgement are favoured. Putting yourself in someone else's shoes is favoured. Tact and peacemaking are favoured.

These Libran qualities will be severely tested, though. Jupiter in Libra is involved in a cardinal t-square right now: squaring Venus and Pluto in Capricorn, opposing Uranus in Aries. Aaargh.

With this, you can expect shake-ups and power struggles, in relationships especially – and abrupt endings in some cases. Things are not going to stay static, no matter how hard we try to maintain the status quo. Deep-seated issues will be brought to the surface – and this is not a comfortable process. Arrangements that have outlived their usefulness will be battered at till they break.

This is in effect for the rest of the year, so it's a good idea to drop your cherished notions of how things ought to be, and focus instead on working with what's at hand.

It isn't about resignation and despair though - that is Neptune-south node swamp stuff. Sagittarius is about hope and enthusiasm, and new moons are about beginnings. So this new moon in Sagittarius is a great time to begin something you find inspiring and uplifting, or to seize a new opportunity.

But as this sky is also relentlessly practical, your dreams must be able to work in the real world. No pie-in-the-sky stuff here, no escapist bullshit. There are big possibilities, but you have to keep your head screwed on and be willing to put the boring work in to make things happen. Nothing is just going to be magically handed to you. You have to keep on being a grown-up and doing your Virgo.

The nice thing is, you'll be a lot happier these days if you do your Virgo. It's not drudgery at all. Focusing on routine, boring, everyday tasks is how you get to feel like a functional human being instead of a confused mess.

And we are all a bit of a confused mess right now. This is a crazy time, and it won't be getting any less crazy for a while. So please try to remember your Virgo (humility and attention to reality). And your Jupiter in Libra (civility, fairness, ability to compromise) to boot.

Full Moon in Taurus

This is tomorrow, the 14th November, around 2 pm GMT.

It's a supermoon, as I'm sure everyone has heard. The biggest one since 1948 apparently – and we won't see another this big and bright till 2034.

Given the societal tensions we've been seeing and the way full moons amp up people's passions, I'd be kinda nervous about this...except this full moon is in settled, stable, reality-based Taurus. That should calm the emotional tone down a bit and make the tension easier to manage.

The story the sky is telling right now is one of tension, though. Go figure. Basically, everybody is angry, people are taking extreme stances and it has become very hard to know what's true. Talk about politics at your peril - firefights are the norm now.

--We have the sun in extremist, polarizing Scorpio, and this is intense by definition. Plus we have Uranus in Aries (populist rage) sending an edgy inconjunct to the Scorpio sun, triggering bursts of destructive collective anger.

--We have Mars (aggression, drive) in the revolutionary sign of Aquarius, in mutual reception with Uranus (shock, revolution) in Aries, a sign which is all about individual will - and this is about popular rage in action. People out on the streets demanding change.

--We have Mercury (speech, communication) newly in Sagittarius, where he is prone to ideological ranting. He is aspecting Mars in Aquarius. This fires up the rage and the potential for wounding, crude, shocking (and/or incisively insightful) communication.

--We have Neptune in Pisces stationing direct on the 19th November, nearly exactly conjunct the south node. This is a swamp of confusion, delusion, lies, inertia and stagnation. Destructive nostalgia; the pull of old addictions, utter head-fuckery and bewilderment.

--We have Jupiter in Libra getting set to square Pluto in Capricorn (exact 24th November) and oppose Uranus in Aries (exact 26th December). This is a test of our civility, our tolerance, our ability to find common ground in the midst of disagreement. It is also a painful magnification of the sense of a corrupt power hierarchy (Pluto in Capricorn) and individual rage against it (Uranus in Aries).

In short, we have not seen an end to populist rage, or to duelling ideologies, or to polarized discourse. Or to the reign of utter crazy bullshit and delusion. Or to the dissolution of everything we thought to be true and stable...

We are still dealing with the aftermath of the transformative, destructive Uranus-Pluto squares (2012-2015), and we will be dealing with this for a long time. Recall that the last time we had a series of squares between these two planets was the 1930s, during the run-up to World War II. This is similar.

Pluto (toxicity, corruption and transformation) entered Capricorn, sign of the establishment, in 2008. That was the year the banking system fell apart. It was propped up at the expense of ordinary taxpayers.

Then Uranus (shock, revolution) entered Aries, sign of individual will and combativeness, in 2011, and collective anger erupted. That's when we watched the birth of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which demanded accountability from governments and the financial system. That's also when we saw the Arab Spring explode all over the Middle East, as people took to the streets to demand change.

Pluto and Uranus squared each other seven times between 2012 and 2015, and they hit like a wrecking ball, reducing a lot of lives to ruins. Populist revolt and shocking violence (Uranus in Aries) vs. extreme efforts on the part of authorities to maintain control, though the systemic rot could no longer be hidden (Pluto in Capricorn). Syria is a perfect example of how this sort of thing plays out on a collective scale - and with Neptune and Chiron in Pisces, the horror of that war can't be contained to just Syria; it is a contagion affecting the entire world.

But on the individual level, plenty of people have been through their own private apocalypses these past few years. Much of this (job and home loss and financial difficulty especially) is tied to the collective catastrophe - the failure of governments and the financial system to provide stability.

This year, to top it all off, we had three squares between Saturn (structure, order, reality) and Neptune (dissolution) – and this has dissolved the scorched earth right out from under people's feet. We no longer know what to expect. The future has always been uncertain, but this is something else entirely. None of it makes sense. And this uncertainty fuels more extremism – people retreat to polarized viewpoints when their sense of stable reality is threatened.

So here we are, at this supermoon in Taurus, and I hope it brings some calm and pragmatism, because we all have to figure out how to move on from here. New foundations have to be constructed; new realities have to be attended to. The old ones are torched.

The sky offers some clues as to how to move forward. Chiron in Pisces (a sense of existential woundedness) supports the full moon, and this says to me that compassion is the right response to turmoil – hard as it may be to come by. Compassion for the oppressed, and for the suffering that underlies the rage of the oppressors. We are all in this planet-sized shit show together.

Chiron is also about healing, and I hope some of that will be on offer. Because the collective polarization and savagery have grown hard to bear.

Another way forward is highlighted by the north node in Virgo, now exactly opposing Neptune and the south node in Pisces. I have been harping on about this for ages, but it bears repeating: pay attention to reality, to the bedrock facts of your everyday life. Attend to the little details of what needs doing. Stay grounded, serve others, help whenever you can, keep to your routines. Do not get stuck in the swamp of your own inertia or delusion or emotional ungroundedness.

All this is easy to say, but it will be pretty damn hard to do. Especially as Neptune stations direct later this week conjunct the south node, and in square to Mercury. It will feel like a complete headfuck, and the temptation will be to retreat into cloud-cuckoo land or a bottle of gin. Try to stay anchored in reality, one mundane task at a time. This has been important all year, with the north node transiting Virgo. But it is absolutely imperative now.

There is a yuuuuge need to accept and be willing to work with reality at this full moon - we must get down to business. We have Venus newly in security-seeking Capricorn, moving to conjunct Pluto on the 25th November - and this, along with the Scorpio-Taurus stuff, is about a fairly ruthless, realistic assessment of the bottom line in relationship and money matters. What you give vs. what you get back.

And by “bottom line”, I don't just mean money – I mean energy, though money and energy are often interchangeable. With Jupiter in balance-minded Libra, exchanges have to be fair, above-board and equal. The energy drains have got to go. This may entail getting rid of things you're quite attached to, and it will hurt.

But you have to drop the dead weight in order to move forward - and the dead weight in this case may be your dreams and illusions about how life should be. We have to work with what life IS.

This is not a time for burying our heads in the sand - this full moon is all about accepting reality, working with it and striving for fairness and balance in the face of conflict, delusion, polarization, shock and instability.