How New Moon Energy Affects Us
Each new moon, we experience the lunar energy of that particular solar Zodiac season. Watch for Monday, April 8’s new moon in Aries — also a solar eclipse.
Artwork©ShushantoChowdhuryshuvo/123rf
One night while I was lying in bed, I started thinking about Aries season, meditating on it a little, and wondering how I may want to integrate it into my life. Not in a linear way, but rather in a feelings-based way — tender and softly.
At every moment the sun is in a Zodiac sign in the sky, but so is every other planet in the solar system — Moon, Venus, Mercury, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, and so on. In our birth chart (a map of the sky at the moment of our birth), we each have the Sun and Moon, Venus and Mercury, and so on, in a specific Zodiac sign. Every aspect of the solar system is a part of us, just as every aspect of life on Earth is a part of us. Separation is an illusion. What is not an illusion is diversity of expression.
One of my favorite aspects of astrology is its ability to point to the ways that we are both archetypally similar yet qualitatively different from all life around us. This acknowledgment and union between that which we share and that which is unique and individual to us opens us to the diversity, unity, and vulnerability of humanity. Belief and trust in this reality is a lens through which we can see the world and our place in it; when we open to this tender truth in ourselves, we can hold ourselves, and consequently others, with a new level of grace and compassion. When we really internalize that we all have the same parts, but that those parts have radically different perspectives, beliefs, visions, needs and desires, we are liberated to be ourselves and for others to be themselves.
Astrology grants us permission to be ourselves by providing the nudge we often need to connect with what that self is, because in many cases it is so tarnished by expectations and beliefs of a one-size-fits-all model from the culture around us that we have to do some serious polishing and excavating to connect with self. Astrology can cut right in and lay it all out before us. Then we have to integrate it. Rituals of all varieties are one of the ways we can practice integrating our experiences in the world, our self-knowledge and self-observation, and our organically shifting and evolving perceptions, understandings, beliefs, and values.
You Are More Than Your Sun Sign
When we talk about the Zodiac seasons, we are talking about what sign the sun is in during an approximately month-long period during the solar year. The sun represents one archetypal aspect of our psyche and of the collective psyche. The sun is our core sense of self, our ego, our sense of who we are, and our identity and place in the world. This is important, but it is by no means all of who we are. Yet, culturally, many of us live through our solar parts, thinking our identity and what we are known for, are what and who we are.
Modern, industrial, capitalism reinforces this by assigning our value and worth to our productivity which is often represented or illustrated in society by our identity — profession, the car we drive, the clothes we wear, etc. Of course, these things are not who we are or our core identity, but we have all been well programed to believe they matter, and we confront those cultural beliefs and values in ourselves and in individuals and institutions around us every day. This often further weds us to the identity associated with our solar parts as we see our worth as dependent on our identity within this achievement-based system.
The other primary luminary that lights up the night sky is the moon and while the moon is just as important and central in your psyche as the sun, you never see lunar horoscopes in the astrology columns in the back of the newspaper or your online news app. The moon represents our feeling space, our emotional center, our soul — the part of us that feels rather than does throughout our life, and the part of us that needs rather than wants. Hugely more vulnerable and increasingly compartmentalized, we rarely live our external or our internal lives in ways that honor the sun and the moon in equal partnership in our lives. We have forgotten how to live as feeling beings.
The moon moves between Zodiac signs every 2-2.5 days. This quick transition between states and qualities is like our feelings, which are shifting and malleable, never static. The moon does not produce light of its own; it reflects the light of the sun. The moon’s orbit around Earth, and therefore its relationship to the light of the sun, determines what phase (how much of the moon) is visible from our particular spot on Earth. When the moon is full, the sun and the moon are opposite and therefore the sun and the moon are in opposite Zodiac signs. When the moon is new, it lies between the sun and Earth and we do not see any illuminated portion of the moon. During the new moon, the sun and moon are in the same Zodiac sign. This means that every new moon we experience the lunar energy of that particular solar Zodiac season — what it has to teach us and offer us as beings who feel rather than do. This is a shift in perception of ourselves from the outside looking in, to the inside looking out. What does it feel like to be in this body, your body, right now?
This exploration of our inner relationship with the energies of the Zodiac signs is universal, as these energies and their evolution exist both within us and outside of us in nature, and in society and culture. Working with the Zodiac in this way is about connecting with our relationships to collective energies and the ways we internalize and integrate those energies in our lives. It is a meditation on the ways we are affected by the universal and how that can lead to evolution and healing.
Brittany Wood Nickerson is a writer, astrologer, herbalist, and interspiritual minister. You can learn more about her work and offerings at ThymeHerbal.com. Sign up for Brittany’s New Moon Ritual and Remedies newsletter here.
