New Moon Eclipse in Leo

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This is today, the 11th August, around 11 am GMT.

It's a partial solar eclipse, the last one of this year's eclipse season. And it's in Leo, sign of creativity, showmanship and self-expression. Leo is a big shiny extrovert sign! It needs to perform, to shine, to be admired and loved.

But this new moon eclipse has a real introvert vibe. We have six planets retrograde at the moment: Uranus stationed retrograde on the 8th August, and there's also Mercury, Mars, Saturn, Neptune and Pluto. All this speaks of an inner illumination rather than an outer one. So if you're craving external validation, you're not going to find it here – it's more about finding your own light and your authenticity, and figuring out how to live from that.

I don't mean this in an airy-fairy “spiritual” way, I mean it in an immensely practical way. Like, how do you pay the rent and eat while doing something you actually enjoy and are good at? How do you channel your energy so that you have enough of it to devote to what you love? How do you arrange your life so that it supports your happiness and uses your particular talents?

It's all entirely possible! It's your life, you're the one in charge of it. But it takes creativity. You have to be willing to try something different and step outside your old comfort zone. This is your year for coming up with a better operating system for your life.

But this isn't the month to be putting anything major in motion – shifts are happening deep underground, and largely outside of our conscious control. Mercury is retrograde till the 19th August, and Mars is retrograde till the 27th, so it's going to be hard to push forward with new plans. It's actually inadvisable to start anything new until these retrogrades end, as you'll be banging your head against a wall.

This is more about germination: new creative ideas are germinating deep underground at this eclipse, with far-reaching practical consequences for your life. (The eclipse is the focus of a yod, an aspect pattern that has to do with abrupt, fateful shifts.)

I think it's important to just let the seeds germinate, entertain new possibilities – you'll find out what's actually viable in the real world soon enough. It should become a lot clearer at the full moon in Pisces in two weeks' time, where we'll be separating fantasy from reality. And then by the end of the month, Mercury and Mars will be moving direct again and you can start moving forward with your plans. But for now, plant your seeds and see what comes up! 

Retrograde Mercury is conjunct the new moon, meaning there will be difficulties and blockages with self-expression. But this doesn't have to be a bad thing! As it's happening in Leo, it looks to me like it's about refining your creative expression - any form of artistic expression requires introspection. (It's interesting to note that a lot of writers have retrograde Mercury in their natal charts: writing is a solitary, internal form of communication, and great writers edit their self-expression mercilessly.)

Jupiter in Scorpio will be exactly squaring Mercury, and again we are looking at this theme of going inward, cutting away the layers of dross that are obscuring your light and your individual voice. This Mercury – Jupiter square also speaks of research and investigation: this is a good time to really research your options. Look under every rock, in order to find out what can help you design a more authentic, creative life for yourself. 

There is a cardinal t-square involving Venus, Chiron & Saturn in effect, meaning you are likely to be feeling some painful insufficiency and deprivation, especially around relationship and money matters. With a cardinal t-square, it's obvious that something has to change. If you're feeling unfulfilled, use this new moon eclipse to look at practical yet creative ways to rectify your sense that something is missing.

The point is really your happiness. How do you build more joy and creativity and fulfilment into your life; what kind of practical measures will you have to take to make a more authentic life a reality; what are your actual options? You can't keep trudging along in your same old rut this year. It's time for a radically new chapter. This month is where we start dreaming it up in earnest. 

Full Moon In Pisces

This is tomorrow morning – the 6th September, 7 am GMT.

We have Mercury stationing direct the day before it, on the exact degree of last month's big solar eclipse in Leo (21st August). So this full moon is a mental revisiting of whatever was going on for you around the time of that eclipse.

And not just mental. This is a full moon in super-emo Pisces, conjuct super-emo Neptune. Suffice it to say, there will be plenty of super-emo, strange, magical stuff happening. The floodgates will be open, for good or ill.

I think for good, not ill. It looks nice to me – spiritual and deep. A good time to focus inward and purify your heart, to forgive, to be compassionate, to have faith in life. To recover radical innocence, per Yeats:

“[...] all hatred driven hence,
The soul recovers radical innocence
And learns at last that it is self-delighting,
Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
And that its own sweet will is Heaven’s will”

Recall, the theme of the eclipse (and of the past two months, basically) has been Leo stuff – creativity, generosity, self-expression, pride, bravery, joy, romance. This sky has been forcing us to ask ourselves how to bring more joy and aliveness into our lives; how to live with heart.  And as it was eclipse season, great changes were demanded.

We're past the great changes and intensities of eclipse season now. This month is more a matter of getting on with the new order of things – our next new moon will be in Virgo, and within a couple of weeks we're going to have all the personal planets (Mercury, Mars and Venus) in Virgo. This is a lot of detail-oriented, systematic, humble, relentlessly pragmatic energy – it's going to be a great month for attending to practical matters and getting things done.

But before we get there, we have this gentle emotional catharsis: this dreamy, romantic, teary, spiritual full moon in Pisces, where we look back with nostalgia, gratitude, and maybe regret at the summer just past - and come to terms with it. It's a feeling the Japanese call mono no aware  – an acute awareness of the impermanence of life in the midst of the everyday.

I'm going to quote Phillip Larkin's “Sad Steps” in its entirety, because it fits, and because Pisces moons are for poetry:

Groping back to bed after a piss
I part thick curtains, and am startled by
The rapid clouds, the moon’s cleanliness.

Four o’clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie
Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky.
There’s something laughable about this,

The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow
Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart
(Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below)

High and preposterous and separate—
Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!
O wolves of memory! Immensements! No,

One shivers slightly, looking up there.
The hardness and the brightness and the plain
Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare

Is a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can’t come again,
But is for others undiminished somewhere.


You see the speaker move from sentimental tropes about the moon to a personal vision that's very clinical and bleak, but deeply felt? I think it's a good resolution of the Pisces/Virgo polarity (feeling vs. reason): it's possible to feel deeply without being self-indulgent; it's possible to see clearly without being cold. That's the kind of balancing act that's called for here.

This full moon looks great for creating art, music, poetry. Also for letting go of things – remember full moons are about endings. It's potentially very beautiful and profound, like a wistful cat.

Wistful cat

But Pisces can also be full of delusion, self-pity, addiction and victim shit – Pisces is the incurable drunk who calls you at 4 am to cry about all the terrible things other people have done to her. And with Neptune conjunct the moon, this is doubly the case here. There's a real potential for people to wallow in their self-created misery, and to try to drag others in too.

The antidote to this sodden emotional mess is Virgo. The north node was in Virgo for the past few years, and I got used to repeating the boring mantra: “Keep doing your Virgo!” It was about attending to practical matters in order to keep from sinking into self-destruction and despair.

The north node is now in Leo, but for the next couple of weeks, it's disposited by the sun in Virgo. So this month, the old advice applies – keep doing your Virgo, stay practical and focused on everyday tasks and routines in order to stave off existential misery.

The nice thing is, the north node is now in Leo, so there's a larger purpose to this Virgo stuff now. It's not just about staying functional and sane. It's about doing the practical work that needs to be done in order to create a life worth living – a life with more authenticity and joy in it.

New Moon in Leo

Katy Perry, your silly song expresses the feeling of this new moon better than I can.

It's tomorrow, the 23rd July, at about 10:45 am GMT and it looks pretty fabulous to me. A major energy-shift after the work-life conflicts and heavy emotional baggage of Cancer lunar cycle.

Leo is about romance, childlike enthusiasm, creative self-expression, ego, bling! It's fun, shiny and a bit over the top. A new moon in Leo is a great time to do something dramatic with your hair, redefine your self-image in some way, or start a new creative project. It's also a great time for starting a new romance, making babies, launching a big idea.

For this new moon, the sun and moon will be conjunct at 0 degrees Leo, which is pretty dramatic in itself. But they're also tightly conjunct Mars in Leo, which adds some self-assertive firepower!

Plus the sun, moon and Mars square rebel planet Uranus in Aries, giving this new moon an abrupt, explosive element – it's a kind of breaking point. What comes to mind is someone who's felt undervalued or slighted for a long time, finally getting the courage to break out and assert their own will and desires.

As this is a square, there is the possibility of a destructive outcome to this, so please exercise a bit of caution. Keep your outrage in check. With Mars square Uranus, there is also the danger of sudden accidents, so please be aware of that too, especially when driving or operating machinery.

Leo is heart-centred and concerned with romance, and there are some difficult things going on in regard to that right now. Love and money planet Venus is in Gemini, where she is a bit of a flitterer, hard to pin down. Venus in Gemini is about multiple choices and a desire for communication, stimulation and variety, especially in close relationships.

But Venus is currently opposing retrograde Saturn in Sagittarius, which acts like a big concrete barrier to those desires. It puts me in mind of a butterfly caught in a net. Saturn in Sagittarius is about walking your talk and laying solid foundations for the future. What this says to me is, there are actually not multiple options here. There's a right path and a wrong one, and the flitterer will be brought down to earth.

This Venus-Saturn opposition is difficult, speaking of blockages, delays and deprivations in love and money matters. It is exact the day after the new moon, so I think there are hard choices to be made here – this is a crossroads really.

We also have a square between Jupiter in Libra and Pluto in Capricorn in play. This aspect is exact on the 4th August, and it speaks of deep-seated power struggles, especially in relationships.

So all in all, the month ahead is not so easy on relationships – there are definitely some kinks to be worked out.

The big question here is, what do you really want? What makes you feel truly alive, not merely surviving? What would it mean to live from your heart? Who and what do you love?

And the way through is about expressing what's in your heart: your love, your conviction, your desire, your creativity, your individuality. Everything in the sky right now points to Leo. We have Mercury in Leo conjunct the north node, meaning the way forward is all about creative, dramatic self-expression. This is not the time for hiding under a rock.

So launch your big ideas with a bit of flair and showmanship. Speak your truths with confidence and pride. If you've been feeling low and under-appreciated, this is the right time to assert your sparkly fabulousness. You're not a doormat or a drudge, you're a one-of-a-kind event. There will never be another you.

This new moon is important, as it sets the stage for eclipse season, a time of accelerated change and intensity. We will be dealing with these Leo themes for the next two months.

In two weeks we'll have a partial lunar eclipse in Aquarius, a culmination of the issues opened up under the new moon. And then on the 21st August, we'll have the main event: another new moon in Leo, this one a solar eclipse (also known as the Great American Eclipse, as it will be visible from a band across the US.)

So clearly, these days the sky is hammering home these Leo themes of creativity, pride, romance and joy. Look at where your life is lacking in these qualities, where you feel like an unloved, unappreciated drudge – and use those feelings as a marker for what needs to change. It's time to be a bit selfish and focus your energy on what really makes you happy.

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