Waning Moon, Void of Course ... Heading Toward Leo!

Monday's New Moon in Leo offers a time to plant new seeds in Leonine soil ... connecting with our passions, playfulness, creativity, confidence, and leadership. Connecting to our heart, stepping into our power, and bringing our light to the world. The House in which the New Moon appears in our birth charts can point to areas of life where we will feel Leo's fire, or perhaps where we most need to light things up. Planets in strong aspect to the New Moon will show which areas of our psyche will be highlighted, and how.

Today we are in the waning Moon phase; for most of today, the Moon will also be void of course. This is not the time to plant seeds for the cycle to come. Instead, we finish work we've begun to release whatever holds us back. This Leo New Moon will call us to stand in the spotlight and embody who we truly are. Now is the time to release whatever thoughts, feelings, memories, concepts, anything that keeps tripping us up, getting in our own way, and blocking our time to shine.

In Simone Butler's post Dancing With Fire, she places the New Moon in the context of the Cardinal Cross and other key sky events, and recommends Sariah Mikaels' Fire Breath for burning away whatever we need to release. This breathing with visualization allows us to anticipate the Leo New Moon and bring its fire into this waning, void of course time.

Today, astrologically, is Lughnasadh, third of the four great fire festivals in the ancient Celtic calendar. During the waning time in the Moon's cycle, we reap what we have sown, gaining understanding and perspective, and sharing our experience with the world. Lughnasadh is marked by the sacrifice of the first fruits, the offering of the first sheaves of ripening grain and the first succulent berries to be sanctified.

Letting go is not easy for the Cancer Moon. And yet the deeply held tradition of sacrifice to acknowledge the gods, goddesses and ancestors and ask their protection for the home, family and tribe, is something tradition-loving Cancer can honor. To sacrifice is to make sacred. In her description of the Fire Breath, Sariah Mikaels reminds us that as we burn whatever it is we need to release, we create light.

Think of the release work you are doing not as rejecting, denying or burying but as offering. Today we celebrate our willingness to let go of what we no longer need, and give the energy we've had locked up back to the universe. We live in an evolving, growing cosmos. Maintaining old forms can move from honoring tradition into a kind of frozen inability to flow with the currents of life.

Today as we are suspended with the Moon in her time between times, we move toward completion of this cycle of experience, insight, sharing and release. Breathe. And as you breathe, dance.

Today's images are of the solar storm that erupted on the Sun on August 1, from NASA, and an image of the aurora borealis that was WikiMedia's picture of the year in 2006.