New Moon in Virgo

This is the 20th September, around 6:30 am GMT.

We have a stellium in Virgo for this: sun, moon, Mercury, Mars and Venus. This is a big blast of organisational energy - it's a great time for working on projects, cleaning up, attending to routines and getting necessary things done. It's also going to be a big month for working on relationships. The point of all this careful, systematic work is described by the north node in Leo - it's about putting in the necessary effort to create a future with more authenticity and joy in it. We are building the kind of lives and relationships we want to live in.

Virgo can be painfully critical, though - try to stay sober, to see clearly and to be kind. There's a big danger of going off on nitpicky tirades fuelled by delusive thinking, hurt feelings or boundary-dissolving substances: Mars is conjunct Mercury in Virgo, which is sharp-tongued and critical as hell, and both planets oppose Neptune, planet of dreams, delusions and addictions. Make sure your version of reality is not just a paranoid projection, before you sit down to tell someone everything you think is wrong with them. It's safer to look to your own shortcomings first. People will be liable to say very nasty, cutting things in the interests of "helping" - and with the sun and moon opposite Chiron, there is bound to be deep hurt and woundedness involved.

So unless you're looking to eviscerate someone, it's probably safest to just keep your mouth shut for the next couple of weeks and attend to the practical tasks at hand. Remember with Venus in pragmatic Virgo, love is what you do, not what you say - and it can be shown in the tiniest, most mundane ways.

This sky is still tough on relationships - Jupiter in fairness-minded Libra is opposing Uranus in me-centered Aries (exact the 28th September). This describes a conflict between the desire to say "to hell with it!" and shoot off alone vs. the necessity of maintaining balanced relationships. As this is an opposition, it will play out interpersonally - we'll have plenty of tests to our sense of civility and fairness this month, and relationships will remain fraught.

We have the equinox on the 22nd September, as the sun moves into Libra - this describes a turning-point. And then we'll have a full moon in Aries on the 5th October, which really looks like it's all about balancing love vs. war, and figuring out how to make relationships work in a practical, everyday way. Seeing the other's point of view and striving for balance and fairness will be very important here.

New Moon in Cancer

This is on the 24th June, 3:30 am (GMT).

For this we have a stellium in Cancer: the sun and moon conjunct at 2 degrees Cancer, with Mercury and Mars also nearby. This speaks of emotionally charged, potentially painful communication about family and the past - the kind that opens up some kind of new start.

Home, heritage, family, food and feelings. That's Cancerian stuff. Feeding and nurturing your dependents and defending your home ground. Mom, apple pie and the atavastic sentimentality those ideas call up. Tribalisms and nationalisms of all kinds – Cancer at worst is clannish and clingily focused on “my” people, distrusting outsiders.

As Mercury is involved with this new moon, there will be discussions of feelings, primal needs and family issues. Emotions / thinking / communication will be bound up together.

With Mars involved, interactions will be tense. Mars in Cancer has to do with intense emotional energy and rapidly shifting moods, and it can be touchy and defensive. In this case, Mars also squares Jupiter exactly, which amps up the emotional energy and edgy "hangriness". (It's a good idea to fill up on comfort food before approaching tense discussions.)

Hangry care bear

Mars-Jupiter aspects are about leaping before you look, and getting yourself into hot water via careless aggression. In this case, the aspect speaks of relationship imbalance and disharmony brought on by emotionally-driven aggression.

Pluto is also involved, meaning the issues here are profound and disturbing. This is a cardinal T-square that will be in effect till mid-July, and there's nothing light about it - it's harsh and full of potential ugliness. A lot of painful shit (especially family shit) is likely to be exposed, and you can expect some rage attendant upon that. But deep structural change is demanded here, and the point is balance and fairness - there are wrongs to be redressed. Resisting this will do nobody any good.

Anyway, heading into these choppy waters, please remember: just because you feel something is true doesn't mean it is! Hold back and try to ascertain the facts. Try to stay balanced and to see the other's point of view – this is an important theme, with Jupiter in Libra.

You can either speak your deeply held convictions here, or blurt hurtful things out of irrational rage - it's up to you. Fighting things to the death is possible, but also pointless. Neptune aspects the new moon beneficially, meaning softness, compassion, forgiveness and acceptance will be helpful.

For this new moon, Venus in Taurus also trines Pluto exactly. There's solid love underneath the conflict - something valuable to be protected. Please try to remember that.

We're dealing with a lot of intensity this month, in the next two weeks especially. The run-up to the full moon in Capricorn on the 9th July is very heavy, and that full moon itself is a doozy of emotional violence.

The changes we're undergoing, in the context of family especially, are powerful and long-term. Conflict on the world stage is to be expected as well. It will be hard to keep a cool head about any of this stuff, when so much emotion is involved, but here's hoping cooler heads will prevail.

These are dangerous days. Women especially are likely to feel under fire. Please be nice to your mom - she'll need it.

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.