New Moon April 3, 2011
13 Aries 30
10:23 AM EDT / 2:23 PM GMT
No more dawdling; no more foot dragging; no more waiting for other people to get their acts together. The Aries new moon blasts us forcefully ahead into the new landscape of our lives.
Wherever we land, we’re not likely to stay for long. The makeup of this moon promises that our rockets will fire again and again and again, shooting us further and further into new territory, pursuits and ambitions.
This will be going on for longer than this one moon phase. As the first new moon of the spring, it’s setting the tone for the next three months. That means how you navigate and experience this weekend has long-term repercussions.
So take note of which way you’re facing. When your fire gets lit, it’s going to happen suddenly and unpredictably, and you (and everyone around you) will leap without looking. Since so much behavior will be instinctual and reactive, you’ll make better use of this catapulting effect if you’re consciously oriented to goals, ambitions and destinations you want.
Many of those relate to foundational life issues — where you feel at home in yourself and in the world, who you want to share your home and your life with — that the Cancer/Capricorn eclipses have been stirring up for nearly two years. This month’s new moon makes a powerful, action-demanding contact to the event that launched that cycle, the Capricorn full moon/ lunar eclipse of July 2009. Which means that the time is ripe for bold, dramatic action on all manner of major decisions that have been swirling around in your intentions.
You’ve been building up to this phase, and it is critical for setting up the platform that will be in place by the final Cancer/Capricorn eclipse in July and carry you forward some 18-19 years. So no back-pedaling. This is no time for making nice, or holding back, or being anything less than rigorously honest with yourself.
Don’t expect anything other than that from people around you, either. Everyone will be in his or her personal rocket ship (at last! the autogyre that was predicted at the 1939 World’s Fair!) and too focused on the ride to pay attention to usual social niceties. Behavior is going to be brusk, abrupt, daring, ambitious, pushy, independent, maybe a little rude, coarse and confrontational. What do you have to gain from taking any of this personally? Aggravation and distraction, primarily — though if there’s an issue you’ve been needing to address, the combustibility of this new moon could trigger the knock-down, drag-out that does the trick.
More than half of the major bodies of the sky are in the sign of this new moon — Aries, which contains the most primal impulse to live, explore, conquer and survive. The Sun and the Moon are near the center of the sign; heart and mind are motivated to leap forward boldly and independently. Jupiter the expander and Mercury, planet of communication and travel, are on the far side, mushrooming fiery, passionate, even frustrated or angry words and running around.
Most importantly, the new moon’s ruler Mars, the god of war, is so close to cosmic wild card Uranus that they’re in combustion, at the doorway to the sign. They’ll complete their fusion by some six hours later, but the tension of their build-up will remain.
This meeting is a powder keg, a match hitting gasoline, a Molotov cocktail, a volcano eruption, a super-sized can of spinach, an ounce of courage — hell, a whole fifth of it. You want action? It’s coming, at times and in ways you don’t and could never expect.
Holding all this down is taskmaster-cum-teacher Saturn, directly opposite the Sun and the Moon. He’s single-handedly counterbalancing all these independent impulses with the weight of obligations, agreements, laws and the impact of our actions on others.
So this new moon presents us with a complicated mix: exciting, energizing, volatile, dangerous, exhilarating, violent, domineering and rebellious, with a ball and chain of personal obligations and commitments hanging off our ankles as we bound about. The opportunity for (or inclination toward) forethought is going to be in short supply. As for patience — well, a nanosecond is about the longest to bank on.
Whatever erupts now isn’t going to disappear conveniently, but reignite for weeks. Mercury has just gone retrograde and will be backtrack over the degree of this new moon just before and after he turns direct on the 23rd. Uranus will move on and off the point of his current meeting place with Mars for the rest of this year and the beginning of next.
My ongoing admonition still holds: Pick your battles, now more than ever.
More pointers in my April horoscopes / Mercury retrograde guide / list of April’s hot dates to beware; take care.
Astro-Insight 