On December 7th comes one of the biggest moments in the sky this year, easily. Big not in its PR, like a retrograde. Big not in its drama, like an eclipse. Big not in its radical change, like an ingress. The optics of this New Moon may seem deceivingly simple, a byline to the more captivating celestial headlines. But don’t count out these Astrological details, for they cast big shadows. They have the power to shape your narrative, building up over time into plot and prose, into the stories we tell about ourselves. The Full Moon in Gemini had us grappling with personal bylines, details, spinning and reporting on them in ways that could serve our narrative. Now, the New Moon in Sagittarius demands scope, that you situate yourself in bigger arenas, that you allow yourself bigger dreams, that you carve out more room for your multitudinal magic. We no longer have to see our lives through the brevity of a sentence or a paragraph or a chapter, the insidious ways in which we chop up our legacy up into digestible pieces, always separate from our whole. Sagittarius lends focus to the epic, the magnum opus that is your life. The moon’s absence beckons you to fill its space in the sky, a Sagittarius space, where limits are unknown. Here, we don’t have to hold ourselves hostage to smallness, to the way things have to go, to the way things have always gone. We can take on the perspective of eternity, and let the adventure write itself. So that then our space in the sky becomes the space that opens up in our lives.
“I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing.”
Jupiter doubles down here. Ruler of the Sun and Moon’s co-residency in Sagittarius, and Mars and Neptune’s co-residency in Pisces, the four forming a two-pronged square with a 2 degree orb. This New Moon offers a taste of what is to come with Jupiter’s yearlong homecoming. We can use all the usual adjectives: hopeful, expansive, optimistic, etc. But all that remains platitudinal unless we assert our right to have them, to feel them. Mars comes bearing this gift, roaring our engines in the direction of experience, taking ethereal concepts and downloading them into our physical awareness. Squares make things obvious and therefore understandable, conquerable. Music is created when wires tense to form a note. And paired with Neptune, this martial music can materialize dreams, or the start of them, and become a place where elusive mirages become real. Under the powerful beams of Jupiter, buoying what can easily be lost at sea, Mars and Neptune swim smoothly in the waters of Pisces. And this is no sea of small fish—this is Moby Dick, your grand myth. You cannot tolerate the small ponds in your life anymore, the spaces that constrict and contort your growth. Now is the time for a bigger container, to confront the vastness within you, and soar.
“It is not down on any map; true places never are.”
This New Moon marks the end of Mercury Retrograde. It is only right that these intentions of grandeur be paired with new clarity of thought. In Scorpio, Mercury takes a magnifying glass to all matters, drilling down past façade and into the naughty bits. Though not exact by degree, Mercury’s co-presence with Venus in Scorpio marks the final stretch of our Venus Retrograde themes (not completely over until Venus struts past 10 degrees of Scorpio, where her macabre motion began). Love was lost, lacking, and labored. What did you learn? What will you take forward with you as the star trails of this New Moon see Mercury’s re-entry into Sagittarius, where the scorpions depth comes up against the centaur’s breadth? It was a moment of extreme invention when one thought to turn the magnifying glass away from things known and pointed it instead at the sky—the telescope. Our collective focus mirrors that moment, hitching our wagons to forces and wonders unknown, instead of continuing to traverse our familiar rocky roads. This New Moon is a reroute, a rewrite, a redo, and a revel. And while no Astrological moment can promise the elixir that fixes your life, we can still enjoy this honeymoon in spite of the things that still taste sour. Jupiter reigns, even when it rains.
“Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe.”
Quotes from Herman Melville's Moby Dick or, The Whale