I've been thinking about this New Moon today because AS ALWAYS the energies of the moon are manifesting before my eyes everywhere I look, in the traffic in the news, in the headlines! IT IS REMARKABLE how it happens. Amazes me every month!!

Been trying to post something on instagram but there's not enough space and there is a JOY to typing freeform like this. (AKA typing as opposed to giving myself arm ache.)

There are two  things I want to discuss. 

First one, this is a new moon (were the sun and moon are together in the sky and therefore there is NO moon in the sky because no light is reflected) but it feels like a bright full moon.

Secondly, Mercury Retrograde in Scorpio and the need to talk about death.

 

New Moon in Libra

This New Moon SLIGHTLY has the vibe of madness that  Full Moon has.  Usually at the New Moon there is a level of peace, serenity, fatigue, rest, tiredness, the closing of a cycle opening into the birth of a new one. New Moon in Libra would be the ultimate duvet day with your lover. Or date night IN. Something sweet, soft and serene.

This New Moon is FRACTIOUS. Mars opposite the lunation, closer to earth than he’s been for 15 years, GLARING red every night and is making the energy hot, argumentative, petulant.

The general philosophy of lunations is that the full moons are about our relationships because we SEE OUR REFLECTION in others, and it’s all about the balancing of opposites.

At this New Moon we cannot see as clearly, everything is dark. But Mars opposite the Moon is still offering an opportunity to push angry buttons.  It’s EVERYWHERE. I was in an Uber earlier and the driver had the radio on but after 5 minutes he said “I’m going to turn this off because it’s making me so angry.” I agreed and told him to whack on Classic FM. He didn’t, I think it was Kiss FM, but it was better though the adverts were painful!!

ALSO - Venus opposite Neptune and Mercury opposite Uranus. (We're confused but should use our intuition.)

When I say opposite… I’ll show you this diagram from the free Relationship Astrology webinar I did on Tuesday. (See if I was on instagram now, I wouldn’t be able to explain this well!) The planets are opposite each other (on different sides of the earth, but opposite.)

 

Oppositions mean we need altercations, interactions, relationships, dialogue… we need to INTEGRATE the bits that we are ignoring and recognise them in ourselves and not just external to us.

Which brings us to Mercury Retrograde in Scorpio (opposite to Uranus in Taurus).  I’ve had some new ideas on what it means based on things I’ve read over the past couple of days.

Baby loss awareness week.

Lots of people have been posting about baby loss. A very important thing to do.

I’ve always been very interested in death (because I’m many ways I’m very Scorpionic,) I have Saturn in Scorpio. I’m interested in it, mainly because I remember so well that when my granddad died in 1999 I remember how my friends handled it. Who was kind and treated me like normal and who was awkward and strange and made things worse. (Classic Scorpio never forgetting!!)

As I write this I’m just realising LITERALLY for the first time that said Grandad had his Sun exactly conjunct my Saturn and he passed away at the total solar eclipse in 1999 that was square to his Sun conjunct the North Node and my Saturn conjunct the South Node. He and I were both born at eclipses so would both be extra sensitive to them. (Sorry for the astrology lingo if it means nothing to you - it means something to about 50% of you so it’s worth adding in as it adds context.)

It really activated my interest in death, pain, loss, grief and how to handle it. So since then, I’ve read things, studied things and I don’t shy away from talking to people about their loss.  It’s so alienating - no one wants to be that person with the drama and sadness. Everyone wants to be happy and full of fun. But sometimes it’s like “how is the world carrying on when my world has stopped?”

I love Lizzie Pickering and her work on grief, her birthday is the day before my Grandads! Hopefully she'll be on my podcast soon. (We should do it in retrograde season as we've been talking about it for so long!)

So with respect to baby loss - it’s so important to discuss the loss but also important to celebrate the short life. Dr Brian Weiss in Many Lives Many Masters writes about his baby who died very very young and the important lesson that his soul taught him. READ that book if you haven’t.  Buy it today.  Next time you find yourself watching the news and wanting to smash the telly, turn it off and go and buy that book and read it.

Death is natural but we have trouble talking about it. “The pornography of death” was a quote that Mrs Kelly taught us as part of A Level R.E., something to put in my exam essays for a double tick, top mark. Death is taboo, porn is the norm.

I was reading stats yesterday on Flu deaths in 2018. Look at this statement taken from www.BBC.co.uk in an article about health in 2018;

“There were around 50,100 excess winter deaths in England and Wales in 2017-18 - the highest since the winter of 1975-76, figures from the Office for National Statistics show. The increase is thought to be down to the flu, the ineffectiveness of the flu vaccine in older people and spells of very cold weather last winter. Most excess deaths occurred in women and the over-85s.”

Is it really an excess death?

In Harry Potter, James Bond, Disney etc… the bad guy can’t deal with death. His goal is always eternal life. Sacrificing his soul to stay on earth for all eternity.

Mercury Retrograde (rethinking) in Scorpio (death) opposite Uranus (shocking) might make us all jump and remember that death is normal. The most predictable thing in life. Sad, painful, terrible. But also a blessed relief, a transition, a beautiful end. Those with faith believe in the soul, perhaps they believe in reincarnation, or maybe you think there is nothing else. That’s up to you. I'm offering food for thought and illustrating some of what I think this sky might be teaching us.

 

Elizabeth Kubler Ross famously wrote extensively on death. Here are some inspiring quotes to help me out because I’m tired and she's brilliant!

Watching a peaceful death of a human being reminds us of a falling star; one of a million lights in a vast sky that flares up for a brief moment only to disappear into the endless night forever. Those who learned to know death, rather than to fear and fight it, become our teachers about life

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of those depths.

 

It's only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth - and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up, we will then begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had.

 

We're put here on Earth to learn our own lessons. No one can tell you what your lessons are; it is part of your personal journey to discover them. On these journeys we may be given a lot, or just a little bit, of the things we must grapple with, but never more than we can handle.

It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather, our concern must be to live while we're alive - to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are.

Those who have the strength and the love to sit with a dying patient in the silence that goes beyond words will know that this moment is neither frightening nor painful, but a peaceful cessation of the functioning of the body.

I think modern medicine has become like a prophet offering a life free of pain. It is nonsense. The only thing I know that truly heals people is unconditional love.

I’ll end here with this one (all taken from t’interweb) but another book I recommend reading, is hers.

“Dying is something we human beings do continuously, not just at the end of our physical lives on this earth.”

In this strange strange time where the world has seemingly gone mad and almost every political governance is insane (obviously because we are all living under the same skies and “as above, so below.”)

We have this retrograde period over the next 3 weeks or so to think about things. to retreat, reflect, reconsider. To think about our lives, how we live them, how we feel, how we deal with things that are beyond our control.  How we love, what we love. What is a good life? What do you want to feel on your death bed? What matters REALLY?  What would you regret? What do you miss? What can you let die? 

Mercury is in Scorpio, the scorpion and the snake shed their skin. They die and are reborn all the time. Crisis is their way. Rebirth is their life.

We all have Scorpio in our chart and so some part of our life is shedding, making way for something more profound.

Go forth and prepare to shed your skin next month.

It's not for me to conclude on these matters… just for us to explore our layers and see where we can refine, rethink, reveal.

XXX