New Moon in Leo!

Last night's New Moon turned the tide. The lunar cycle shifts into seeding, beginning, burgeoning, growing ... Now we make our wishes and set our intentions for the time to come.

There is one important time today when patience is needed ... not one of Leo's virtues, so let me set that out right now: At 3:10pm EDT, the Leo Moon makes her final aspect, an opposition to Neptune in radical Aquarius, and then goes void of course until 7:01 pm when she steps into careful, practical Virgo. The void of course period is not a good time for New Moon rituals or for manifestation work. So, dive in this morning, or wait until later this evening!

Planting seeds during the New Moon is an ancient tradition, and a powerful approach to manifestation work. For an introduction to this process, check this earlier post. At each New Moon, we can wish for whatever we most need ... aligning our intentions with the energies of the New Moon gives them wings and speeds them on their way.

Pythia Peay writes: "If there is an astrologically-appointed time to discovering and incarnating the glory of who you were born to be, the Leo New Moon is it." We each have a unique gift, the bright light of our own hearts and souls, to bring into this life. We are the hero of our own story. Joseph Campbell wrote: "The adventure of the hero is the adventure of being alive."

Manifesting with the New Moon, we join our hearts with the cosmos around us, recognizing with joy that we are not alone in a reality solely of our creating. We are surrounded by sentient beings of all kinds whose hearts and souls co-create with us. Leo loves to shine, but not alone! Leo craves the attention of loving others, and passionately offers that attention in response ... light shining with light.

New Moon wishes come from the heart. Their wording and form needs to resonate deeply with you. Here are some suggestions for this New Moon in passionate, playful Leo; use any you like to create wishes that shine for you:

• I wish to easily find myself experiencing joy.
• I wish to find myself easily and naturally moving through my days with confidence.
• I wish to easily find myself accepting leadership roles aligned with my goals and skills.
• I wish to easily and naturally discover the life path best suited to bringing my unique gifts into the world.

Specific wishes are also appropriate, worded for your circumstances:

• I wish to easily and naturally bring joy and playfulness into my role as a parent, creating loving and fun times with my children.
• I wish to easily find myself experiencing a new confidence in my public speaking.
• I wish to naturally find myself acting and speaking at work in ways that bring positive recognition and promotion.
• I wish to easily find myself writing creatively and passionately in ways that resonate with readers.

We make our wishes and send them out to the cosmos, trusting in the wisdom and abundance of life to make it so. Then we dive in with Leonine passion, shining with new creative fire, as we live from the heart.

Waning Moon in Leo

This morning's Moon leaves behind a flowing trine with Jupiter and Uranus but has not yet reached the Sun, leaves behind an edgy inconjunct (angle of adjustment) with stern Pluto, and flows energy in sextile with Mars in balanced Libra.

The New Moon arrives tonight, but not until 11:08pm EDT ... and that feels like forever to this Leo Moon, singing I Just Can't Wait to Be King!

Remember, we remain in the last hours of the waning lunar cycle, the balsamic phase. The time is not yet ripe for New Moon wishes and intentions, for stepping into our resplendent, passionate Leo selves. Patience is not a Leonine virtue, so today could be challenging.

The shadow aspects of Leo include a self-important pride that resents any perceived lack of attention, and can lash out in dramatic fashion against those who should be more appreciative. Venus, planet of harmony and relationship, is conjunct Saturn and square Pluto now, so we're in a time when our close relationships are under review, and feeling pressure to change or release any not serving our highest good.

Today's waning Leo Moon, feeling challenged in relationships and, also, perhaps out of sorts and out of balance, might embody an exiled king like Lear, old, worn out, bitter at the losses he's suffered, and unwilling to see how his own attitudes and actions contribute to his suffering.

As we near the gateway of this passionate New Moon in Leo, our chance to come into our true heart and burst forth in a glorious expression of our creative passion, we want to avoid foundering on the shoals of false pride. Today is a good day to remember that one of Leo's gifts is playfulness. Leo loves to laugh, big rolling guffaws that come up from the toes and get everyone else laughing too. Leo loves the delight of children in bright colors and creative play.

Caroline Casey is a playfully creative and irreverent astrology and activist who understands the interplay between power and humor. Her book Making the Gods Work for You: The Astrological Language of the Psyche offers insightful, balanced and fun ways to understand and work with the very big energies that come to us through the planets. I find myself recommending this book a lot these days and use it often myself. If your inner Lear needs a jester, you'll find one here!

Tonight at 11:08 is the New Moon in Leo, an opening in the midst of a time of cosmic change when we can fully embody and express our unique and wonderful selves. Astrologer Lynda Hill works with the Sabian symbols, images channeled for each of the 360 degrees of the zodiac. Her new post uses those symbols to explore the intricate patterns of this New Moon, a great resources for understanding its possibilities and power.

Today, bend Leo's creative passion to a last effort to release whatever we need to let go, avoiding wounded pride and emotional drama, sensing just over the horizon the New Moon gateway.

Waning Moon Transitioning in Leo

For most of today, the Moon continues in her long void of course time, resting, reflecting, finishing. We have entered the balsamic phase of the lunar cycle, when whatever we experienced in this cycle is reduced to its essential form. The balsamic phase is the end of the cycle, marked by an awareness of loss, the ephemeral nature of life, and the inevitability of change.

As the Moon waits in a time-between-time, Venus conjoins Saturn in Libra. Venus has been approaching this point for days, taking her turn in one of the Cardinal Cross hot seats, opposing Uranus and Jupiter, and squaring Pluto. Today's exact conjunction with Saturn brings Venus into focus. As she lends her creative charm to Saturn's attempts to hold the line, challenges Uranus and Jupiter to bring an awareness of others into their bold demands for radical change, and tempers Pluto's relentless drive to tear down everything in pursuit of improvement, we may feel our own Venus issues coming to the fore.

Are our key relationships balanced and beautiful? Is our creative life flowing in harmonious ways? Are we attuned to the flow of our lives, dancing with the energies around us, so we experience serendipity, synchronicity, "luck"? These are Venus-and-Saturn in Libra questions.

Best to think about them during the void, too, because when the Moon steps onto the Leo stage at 7:23pm EDT, she'll join a drama already in full swing. The Leo Moon begins strutting her stuff with a flowing trine to fiery Uranus at 7:36pm, a sextile to responsible Saturn at 10:02pm, a sextile to lovely Venus at 10:36pm, a trine to exuberant Jupiter just after midnight, and a sextile to fair-minded Mars at 5:40am Monday. The Moon's going to need all her creative passion tonight!

I like Auntie Moon's blog post for the upcoming New Moon, titled Please Acknowledge Me, and let me say right here how much I enjoy her insightful, creative writing. CJ Wright shines her light on how we can navigate today's transition from a void Moon with a Venus-Saturn focus on the important other people in our lives, to the "look at me!" energy of a Leo Moon.

Look in your birth charts to see where Leo falls. This is the area of life in which we most crave acknowledgment. And here's the key to today's transition, as she says:

"If you haven’t told someone recently just how much you appreciate them ~ those silent, behind-the-scenes people who carry your weight on their shoulders ~ give them a moment in the Leo spotlight by telling them now. You need to tell them, and they need to hear it. Acknowledgement. Appreciation. There’s nothing like it. It always feels good, and it really hurts when it’s missing."

Today's images of the lotus and the hug are available from WikiMedia Commons, and I thank all the wonderful creative folks who share their work through that website!