Coming in hot several days late after this transit rocked my mortal world. But that’s material for another post.
Dark Moon is the pause between lunar cycles, when we get a chance to rest and reset. By the time the Moon is at home with the Sun, we should have digested our lesson of the past lunar cycle. The days around Dark Moon are a great time for rereading journal entries, notes, reviewing camera roll, and even looking back over significant text messages. Sometimes when we look back like this, we see something that passed over us the first time. This is often true when it comes to the cyclical themes that come to us through Moon and Sun. Things can be easier to understand in retrospect, so it’s good to do a lot of review.
The sign that the Dark Moon is in colors the lunar cycle to come. Scorpio, the sign co-ruled by Pluto and Mars, tends to relate to us through our wounded nature. Everyone is wounded, and our wounds shape our personality and our self-expression. They also impact how we relate with other people – whether we view others as inherently friendly or dangerous, whether we act closed off or open-hearted.
Most damaging to our psyche are the things we hold in our inner mental storage instead of responsibly doing our processing. This is Scorpio’s territory. Scorpio is the fixed water element, which is the dark, compressed water at the bottom of the ocean, where strange beings live secret lives. All of us have a part of ourselves that is Scorpio, even if we have no placements there on the natal chart. We all have a mysterious inner darkness. But not everyone is comfortable in that deep water.
The Moon’s domain is our primal, unconscious reactive emotions. So during the lunar cycle that begins in Scorpio, we will have an opportunity to learn about the darker side of our emotional nature. Usually the Moon works with us through throwing emotional trials, bringing up triggers we thought we had long since resolved and hitting us in the grief about our childhood.
During this lunar cycle, weaker personalities will avoid and repress instead of processing and digesting. It’s easy to get distracted when the other people you’re close with show their avoidance and repression. Try to remember that the most important thing for you to pay attention to is your own avoidance and repression. Obsessing over what other people are doing wrong is only a way to avoid dealing with the ways you are also a problem.
Generally it’s more advisable to focus on yourself and improve yourself, because that’s actually within your sphere of influence. Usually people who are more focused on what other people are doing wrong (which is outside their sphere of influence) are not actually exercising their agency (which is within their sphere of influence), and frankly that’s embarrassing. You should be checking yourself regularly to make sure you’re not showing your ass like that.
This year’s Scorpio Dark Moon takes place in the context of two inner planet retrogrades, with Mercury Rx in Scorpio and Venus Rx in Libra. These two will simultaneously station direct the day before Mars and Jupiter meet in conjunction at the South Node and in a trine with Chiron.
What does that mean? It will be different for each person depending on the natal chart, but in general terms, we can expect that a small problem we’ve been able to tolerate for the long term will suddenly become big and require immediate action. Something on the back burner has not been stirred in too long and it’s beginning to boil over. It may relate to a need to practice release or exit. This kind of astrology is always harsher on those of us who are well aware that we are avoiding or delaying something. Usually with folks who are genuinely trying their best and acting in good faith, and have genuinely overlooked something, the Gods are gentle.
Under Jupiter transits I always say that it’s important to remember two things.
One: the Gods can only act on things you can’t deal with through your own personal action. If you’re waiting for divine intervention in a situation where you need to be taking responsibility for your own choices, then your life is going to suck forever because that’s what you’re manifesting. Manifestation isn’t something you do with your thoughts or with intangible energy like “intention.” It’s something you do through taking action. For example, if you wanted to manifest money, you could take classes toward earning a degree or certificate that would qualify you for a higher-paying job.
Two: Bad luck and good luck both come in disguise. Luck can change on a dime. Always hold judgment until the story finishes playing out. It could take the entire duration of the two post-retrograde shadows.
