New Moon Rituals and Remedies through the Zodiac
For the past few months, I’ve been pondering and wondering around the question - what do I want to write about once we return to Aries season, where this newsletter began back in April of 2023? That first Aries newsletter emerged rather organically and impulsively from me - like Aries often does and is - and it started a momentum that propelled me through the entire Zodiac. Now, this newsletter is a thing - I get little notes and likes from my readers and some of you even pay for your subscription, which I greatly appreciate. So, I’ve been meditating on what wants to emerge, what do I want to do this next trip around the sun?
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 helps grant 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 that 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.
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 that 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 everyday. 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 through 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 the 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 the 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.
My goal for this next trip through the Zodiac wheel is to meditate and reflect on the lunar experience of each Zodiac sign - what it has to teach us and offer us as beings who feel rather than do. This is a shift from our 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 is not meant to be an exploration of the Zodiac sign as it lives in your birth chart - although if you have planets in the sign of focus you may relate to the content in particular ways. It is meant to be an exploration of our inner relationship with the energies of the Zodiac signs, which like all processes are universal. We can all relate to these energies and their evolution as they 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 that we are affected by the universal and how that can lead evolution and healing.
Each month on the new moon I will send out a newsletter with some combination of reflections, remedies, and rituals that have the goal of supporting you to reflect and look inward toward the inner world of feelings. It will be the accompanying lunar perspective for that particular solar Zodiac season. This will likely be an evolving offering, but my thought as of now is that I will include recipes and rituals that folks can engage with on their own time in any way they wish - the hope being that they serve as an invitation to tune into these energies and integrate the lunar parts of themselves and the collective into their lives. It is my hope that this work may support all of us in the project of bringing our individual and collective lunar parts into equal partnership with our solar parts and to support the world in feeling its way into wholeness, compassion, and collective liberation.
There will be parts of every newsletter that will be available to all subscribers and parts that will be only for paid subscribers.
I always love hearing feedback from my readers, so please don’t hesitate to reply to the newsletter if you have something you want to share with me!
My first New Moon Rituals and Remedies newsletter will go out this Monday, April 8th - the new moon in Aries and the solar eclipse!