Aries is the first sign of the Zodiac, the beginning of the wheel of constellations. With this New Moon in Aries, key themes will be manifestation, the personality, and the role of the ego. We seek to honor our individual personalities and understand the responsibility or privilege that we have when we perform who we are. Our goal with this lunation is not to escape from the ego or from our personality: our goal is instead to bask in the freedom of curating and expressing who it is that we are.
Associated with this lunation is therefore a strong feeling of our own becoming — a process by which we transition through every moment from who we’ve been to who we’ll be as we walk along the path of who we are. With a flowering of energy in the sign of Aries, we step into this process of becoming by really valuing who we are in this moment. The highest expression of energy in this transit will therefore come from the heart, rather than the mind: the New Moon in Aries asks us to hold space for all of those feelings in our hearts–as raw or intense as they may be–without spiraling.
Venus, Mercury, and Chiron are all also present in Aries for this lunation, contributing to this sense of a fiery abundance. Venus’s magnetic energy pulls a needed sense of beauty, calm, and harmony into Aries, the sign that is traditionally ruled by Mars. Thanks to Venus, there is a level of sweetness in this lunation — and, as a matter of fact, we are profoundly grateful that Mars is a few signs away in Gemini and not conjunct here also in Aries! This configuration gives us something sweet, something gentle, a lovely pleasantness. In other words, there is an emotional quality to this New Moon, something to dull the edges and make us smile to ourselves. Whatever pulls that gentle smile out of you may give you an insight to a part of yourself that you could honor in this moment.
Mercury pulls us into the space of habitual action, and gives us the drive to critically reconsider how we spend our time on a day-to-day basis. It is a powerful moment to reflect on the habits that no longer serve us, so done to begin to step out of those habits that no longer ground our identities in what feels good. It is a conscious reckoning with those multiform performances of life that make us who we are; Mercury and Venus give us the power to see which of those generate beauty, grace, harmony, and to flock toward them.
Chiron, requiring that this habit-change be directed toward what is good and healthy, is holding us accountable in this process. We could think of it with a theater metaphor: it’s a new season and there’ll be a new show, with new actors and a new director, new costumes and a new stage design, new lighting and a new script. We are the playwright, the director, the protagonist of the story and the leading actor. The story is in our hands now as ever, a great power and a great responsibility.
Jupiter in Aquarius and Mars in Gemini are both applying in sextiles from the Air signs closest to Aries. Jupiter is playing the role of the “benevolent sovereign,” while Mars is transfiguring the energy in Aries into the form of a mirror held up to the self. For Jupiter, the necessity in this moment is to find the admixture of freedom and discipline that allows us to be our authentic selves; this balance will generate a deep sense of trust that grounds us in the knowledge of ourselves. Mars, on the other hand, quickens this astral framework to life: Mars in Gemini takes the authenticity brought by Jupiter, and the ego-identity-personality focus from the configuration of Aries, and directs that array of energy inwards. The conversation shifts with Mars from “who am I?” to “how do I interact with myself?” In that sense, Mars in Gemini asks us to connect with our inner child, and to serve as the model for ourselves. With Chiron in Aries — the domicile of Mars — there is a profound capacity to heal one’s inner child with this energy. By being authentically me, I serve as my own role model.
The primary challenge of this lunation comes from a square from Pluto in Capricorn. It may present as a bit of a torment, one that appears to create the opposite result of what we would have wanted. Something is bound to come up, but it may be a push to engage in a final moment of cleansing. Capricorn represents how we understand and render structure; it asks that we think deeply, over and over again, about the structures of our lives. We could define structure in a number of ways: in terms of money, work, family, culture, leadership, relationship to community, etc. Pluto’s test in this moment brings about the themes of maturation, aging, and the passing of time. It is time to pick up the lessons and the growth and the changes from the past few months, and direct them towards our healing. How was the transformation of structure unsettled your sense of self, and how will you integrate this new reality into a new sense of self?
The key is I N T E R P R E T A T I O N: how do you interpret all of this energy of ending and beginning? How do you take these lessons and turn it into a font for healing?
Some instructive concepts to ponder are as follows:
The need to find new ways to relate to self and others
The formation of a new identity & new forms of communication
The act of being open, authentic, and real
[Kindly transcribed and edited by Lou Moffa from my live Zoom Moon Circle workshop which I facilitated on April 11, 2021]