New Moon at 4 degrees 47 minutes Gemini
May 25, 2017
3:44 PM ET
The New Moon happens within 5 days of the Sun’s entrance into gemini, ushering in nearly a fully month of Gemini’s airy brightness, propelled by the force of the waxing Moon.
The fruit of June’s Full Moon in Sagittarius is contained within the seed of this New Moon in Gemini. The Moon’s path to ripe fullness over the next couple of weeks is also dotted with several tokens of beautiful astrology, along with some challenging snags. This New Moon grows among a clearing from extraordinary number of simultaneous planetary retrogrades and stations of April — a Spring start of review and reflection, delay and contemplation, revisitation of the past.
The Full Moon happens in lucky Sagittarius. Jupiter’s sign, tempered by Saturn’s watchful gaze, extends generosity, ennobles its devotees, and opens up horizons. The Full Moon is nearly simultaneous with Jupiter’s station direct, which gains potency from now.
Gemini is about choices and duality. It is a season of transition, and Gemini’s ruler Mercury is notorious across time and geography to be adept at occupying the middle space, the threshold and the boundary. All alignments and activities under this new moon are guided by the mode of duality.
Yet light and airy Gemini, loving as it does to flit here and there dispensing of its acuity, has carried its fair share of the weight of burden since 2015 when Saturn entered Sagittarius and formed a strong angle to the sign. This years long passage of clarity, maturity, and encountering the hard lines of reality is reflected in turn by the seed moment of the New Moon itself, with Mars occupying the nimble sign and stimulating an opposition to Saturn standing across the sky in Sagittarius.
This alignment speaks doubly about a cutting. A sacrifice is asked for by Saturn, and it is to be carried out by Mars. Restraint, the withholding of indulgence in something deeply desired is exercised so that the commitment to a higher goal is proven, paving the path for the manifestation of the wish. What is given up may have a dual nature associated with it, or the act itself may yield a dual result. Coming from another angle, a limit forced upon the life by circumstance or consequence can in turn be met with another one in order that gain may result.
In Homer’s Hymn of Hermes, the trickster god does just this. Hermes sacrifices his desire for meat so that his lot may improve. Apollo the Sun god of prophecy and skill in arts, whose cattle Hermes stole and skewered, winds up blessing Hermes with his friendship, and as a god in his own right.
In yogic and Vedic thought, tapas is the heat generated by effort made to give something up. It is the willingness to practice an austerity for a prayer or intention to become manifest. Waking up at sunrise, doing a daily practice, keeping a schedule, fasting, are all kinds of tapas.
After Mars meets with Saturn, it makes an easy sextile with Uranus. The stymied desire that is met with the application of heat, effort, and limit is then liberated. This liberation leads to worldly works that are themselves vehicles of liberation due to actions guided by the effortlessness of divine organization. Uranus in combination with Saturn is the spiritual re-organizing principle, and Mars in Gemini facilitates this new order by applying the will to dedicated action over the coming lunar cycle.
Venus is square to Pluto at the time of the New Moon. While this can speak of many colors of trouble in love — its more productive expression is via a connection to a transcendent power source. Whether that is healing a relationship, healing via a relationship with a healer, or accessing, liberating, and transmuting buried instinct, base emotions and desire. It is about finding the root and soul of desire in all forms of desire.
In the realm of Gemini, and with Saturn strongly activated, healing means liberation. Gemini flavored liberation comes through the recognition of the arbitrariness and contingency of rules, customs, traditions, and laws. What is the right thing to do in a given situation? Rather than adhering to an established code of conduct, Gemini answers, it depends. In an oppressive situation, the conditions for oppression are assessed. Is a person a slave to their own consequences and appetites or to unjust social circumstances?
Gemini charmingly compels us to see the world through the lens of choice, the spirit of lightheartedness, and the filter of fractal possibility. It is to muddy up strict definitions what reality actually is, suspend belief in the boundaries created of guilt and shame, and allow a greater organizing principle to re-arrange the set of imaginable possibilities and guide the way there.
With wishes for a blessed New Moon,
Ichrak
