09
Oct
0 No comments

I’m not one to blame Mercury for all my problems during its retrograde, and I take full responsibility for the late New Moon post. Nonetheless, this retrograde has been a classic and I admit to grumbling at Mercury under my breath a lot this past week.

But the New Moon chart covers the entire month until the next New Moon — situations we will need to work on, the resources that are available for that work, and the best timing for our endeavors. So here are my only slightly-belated thoughts on the chart.

This month, many of our relationships — between people, between groups, between countries, between humans and our environment — will be up for reconsideration and then either restoring or releasing.

Many, if not most, relationships involve games — games of power, games of war, and some just for fun and play. The best relationships are based in authenticity, spontaneity, deep caring, and the laughter that comes from shared joys. The best games encourage those qualities.

This month is a good time to take a closer look at our relationships and the games we play within them.

The problematic games — the ones we play to psychologically and emotionally manipulate each other — will be far more obvious, even to observers, and the fallout can be serious.

Give me a few paragraphs to briefly delineate the chart for the astrologers among you, and then we’ll look at what resources the month ahead offers us to meet that challenge.

(Astrologers: Cast the chart for October 6, 7:04 am, EDT, Washington, DC. A chart cast for the capital of a country is valid for the whole country. You can use the capital of your country, state, or county to get more specific information for your location, adjusting the time as needed for your zone. Note that planets and their aspects are global, the angles and houses specific to the chart’s location.

Here are the high points:

The New Moon is in Venus-ruled Libra, so yes, all the keywords — beauty, harmony, relationship, justice, art — are in play. But the basic concept underlying Libra is Self and Other — the way we encounter and interact with others in the world. This includes relationships in which people are in conflict with each other — hence Libra’s rulership of lawsuits. Sagittarius rules the courts and the law, but Libra speaks to the relationship between the parties involved in a lawsuit and to the goal of the courts — justice.

Mars is tightly conjunct the New Moon, in its detriment in Libra.

Mercury, in retrograde, is in a wide but approaching conjunction to the NM as well. It is still square Pluto and trine Jupiter.

Venus is in the later degrees of Scorpio, also in detriment. Venus and Mars are in mutual reception. The standard astro-wisdom suggests that mutual reception doesn’t help much here, because both planets are in detriment. But I think they can help each other to a deeper understanding.)

“The naked truth is still taboo.” ~ Bob Dylan

The likelihood of getting your feelings hurt is pretty high this month. Same for you hurting someone else’s feelings accidentally or deliberately. Emotional fallout will have real-world results. Misunderstandings and miscommunications will abound.

But this confusion and emotional turmoil stirs the pot and brings issues to the surface for healing and reconciliation. The astrology suggests ways we can learn from conflicts and confusion, then use those insights to strengthen and heal our own inner wounds and so heal our relationships.

Something we’ll want to look closely at this month are relationship taboos — our own and others. Some of them may be necessary, some are just silly, and way too many are actively damaging.

The taboos are beliefs we hold that something is forbidden, prohibited, shameful. There are consequences for breaking taboos. Some of those consequences may come from others (being shunned, for instance), some are triggered by inner guilt and shame.

It will help to keep track of our thoughts and emotions and pay attention when we feel uncomfortable about something, even if, on the surface, we don’t feel there’s any reason for that.

We’re in search of the taboos we hold on to and the conflicting beliefs that are invariably in play when we are feeling guilt and shame. Exploring these taboos can lead to a deeper truth that will help free us from the bondage of guilt and shame.

Most of the beliefs we need to look at are stored in our subconscious mind, along with a ton of other information.

The subconscious mind drives many of our decisions and actions because it processes incoming information from our environment far faster than our conscious mind. This allows us to react quickly when necessary, and minimizes the need to keep a lot of information in our conscious mind, since that part of our mind uses a lot of the body’s metabolic energy.

The fact that our actions are often driven by our subconscious mind does not make us a victim of unconscious forces. We can assess our thoughts and emotions, listen to our intuition or inner voices to bring what we need to examine up to consciousness.

This self-questioning is important. Once we identify certain beliefs by dragging them into the light of our conscious attention, we can solve the conflict by figuring out which belief accurately reflects reality and how it lines up with our core values. Then we can consciously let go of the inaccurate and often harmful beliefs. Kind of like deleting a file from a computer’s storage drive.

Once we do that, our subconscious mind will respond to situations by referencing the belief that we have chosen. The one that reflects who we are now, not past conditioning.

“Anybody can become angry – that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.” ~ Aristotle

It’s not only taboos that we’ll be looking at. Anger and aggression will also be very much in the air, along with a real pressure to “get it done”.

Be on the lookout — in yourself and others — for some of the more problematic actions that anger can incite. Under this sky, passive-aggressive behavior, gaslighting, gossipy backstabbing and verbal abuse are more likely than outright violence, but violence is always a possibility when someone is angry enough.

Anger, handled well, is a helpful emotion that lets us know when something we care about is threatened, some core value has been trampled. It urges us to act, to do something, but the key to a good outcome is making sure we take the right action — along with all the other “rights” Aristotle mentioned.

Once your anger has awakened you to the need to do something, put it aside, let it go — at least for a few moments. You can always pick it back up again if you want, but take some time for calm consideration. How can you take the right action, even the compassionate action? Contemplating Aristotle’s various “rights” can help you move ahead with integrity.

Healthy boundaries are important to any relationship and this is a good time to pay attention to your own. If you are one of my magical readers, do some cleansing work, and strengthen your energetic shields. (If you don’t know what I mean by that, there’s a whole chapter about it in “Touch the Earth, Kiss the Sky”.)

This work will help you manage your own anger, and help keep you from being overly affected by angry vibes around you.

Overall, the month ahead is a bit chaotic, but it also holds the promise of solid achievements. To create those achievments, we must care for our relationships, look for the truth underlying our cultural and personal taboos, and reclaim the power inherent in that truth.

As we move into the spooky season of Halloween, followed by the ancestral rites and observances of Samhain, death will be in the foreground of our cultural attention. And death is something around which we have a whole lot of taboos.

The next New Moon on November 4th has a lot to say about death — and rebirth. I’ll try to get that post up in a more timely manner.

As always, if you would like some insight into your own chart and how the current astrology is affecting you, contact me for a consultation.

Blessings of the season to you,

Leave a Reply