The New Moon is in Virgo at 18° Virgo – Paths, Prisons, or Perturbations?
The New Moon is in Virgo at 18° of Virgo. Virgo is the sign of the Virgin Goddess. It represents being detailed and perfectionistic, concerned with cleanliness, orderliness, and details. It is also the sign that serves—in the military, as a nurse, or as a civil servant. Virgo is the one who takes care of others. She is also the Virgin Goddess.
This Virgo New Moon is sextiling Mars, which gives it a tremendous amount of energy for setting new intentions and actually seeing them through. It gives us focus, self-assuredness, and the ability to carry out our actions. As Mars is in Cancer, we’ll feel particularly motivated by our home base and family, and by taking care of our people. Mars in the sign of Cancer, a sign related to the mother, also brings in feminine motivations.
The ruler of this New Moon is Mercury, and Mercury has just moved into Libra and is at 0°, a critical degree. It brings in the element of communication, with a focus on relationships, fairness, and balance. This might be difficult because Mercury is also opposite Neptune. This opposition to Neptune brings confusion, which complicates Mercury in Libra’s already indecisive nature.
Neptune is in Aries. On one hand, Neptune in Aries is spiritual pioneering. It’s bringing in new ways of being spiritual.
That has been my personal quest with my course – The Hidden Architecture of the Cosmos: The TYCHOS 101. I thought I was on my own, but I was surprised to see an entire series on The Astrology Podcast about astrology and its spiritual roots. We cross very similar territory, but our conclusions are vastly different.
Chris Brennan is thorough—one podcast was over six hours—with a lot of Virgoan detail, scholarship, and reliance on texts and the scientific method. He talks about Hermeticism and Gnosticism and their roots in astrology, and he comes to some conclusions. Some of them are profound, but some, in my humble opinion, miss the mark.
Strangely, he touches on the very method where we differ. At one point, he mentions that the information given and written in these texts was often divinely inspired—given by a god, such as Adapa or Thoth, or received directly from the sky.
While I traversed the same texts, my conclusions were inspired by asking and connecting with the divine. I walked a pilgrimage, sat in meditation, connected with the land and sky, and what came to me was the same, but also vastly different.
And this is where confusion and indecisiveness can come in. There is so much information to sift through, organize, and make sense of. One person is saying this and another that… What do we believe?
Mercury at 0° doesn’t help. Expect indecisiveness.
But Mercury also forms a kite. It makes sextiles to Pluto and Uranus, and so this brings in new ways of communicating and new ways of seeing the world. It brings in originality and ideas that may be ahead of their time. It brings in a probing mind and an ability to research and get to the depths beneath the superficiality.
If we can get past the confusion, the kite formation can send us flying. And to do that, my suggestion is to stay curious. Organize your information into yeses, nos, but mostly maybes.
Staying in the noncommittal state of curiosity gives you more time to see what’s true, what’s true for you, and what you might have to add that isn’t already there.
One more thing: Mercury is conjunct the asteroid Magdalena.
Magdalena brings in the Divine Feminine energy. And she really touches on this confusion of thought because, ultimately, I believe we are struggling to understand the Divine Feminine and her role.
It was recorded in the Bible that Jesus cast seven demons out of Mary, and that devolved into the idea that she was a prostitute. At this point in history, most of us have cleared up that Mary was never a prostitute. But when we go a layer deeper, we discover another interpretation—that those seven demons were seven archons. And here’s the Magdalene confusion.
In early spiritual thought, the daimon—which later became the demon—descends with the soul and guides it. It is the soul’s ally. Later, in Gnosticism, it becomes the archon, which descends before the soul and sets up the prison. It is the soul’s adversary that we are meant to break free of.
Both are “of” the planetary realm, but one is a supportive psychopomp that guides the soul through the spheres, while the other is an imprisoner.
But for me, there is a deeper layer. These two ways of connecting with the spirituality of the cosmos fall short. In Gnosticism, the cause of the fall is Sophia—a woman. In Hermeticism, the guide to the heavens is a man—Hermes.
But Virgo reminds us that the Divine Feminine goes further back.
Seshat was the female counterpart of Hermes/Egyptian Thoth, and to me, she embodies something lost, hidden, and forgotten. She is the Lady of the Library. She counted the notches of life on her palm. She created letters, measured and aligned temples to the cosmos. She is the lost and forgotten Virgo.
And I think she holds the knowledge of the path through the seven spheres that will honour the feminine.
Magdalena connected to Mercury, brings in all of these elements. Because, in truth, her name was not Magdalena—she was a Magdalene, which means “tower.” She was a priestess in the mysteries of Inanna → Ishtar → Isis → Magdalene—the path of Venus.
Exactly conjunct the New Moon are several asteroids. These asteroids remind us of the power of our words and the power of the unseen, Mercurial world. They are Askapaphus, Circe, and Chiminigagua.
Askapaphus represents themes of discretion and the consequences of revealing secrets. In mythology, he informed Hades that Persephone ate pomegranate seeds, which led to her spending part of the year in the underworld. This resulted in punishment from Demeter, Persephone’s mother, who turned him into an owl.
The energy reminds us of the consequences of revealing information—that it can lead to fallout or things that we don’t expect. It reminds us to think ahead before we speak, or to at least reveal information to the initiated—those ready to receive.
The other asteroid connected with this New Moon is Circe. She was the goddess of witchcraft, and she was skilled in transforming things into different forms. She transformed the crew who found themselves on her island in the great epic of Odysseus, turning them into swine.
And so this brings in another aspect of Mercury: the magician, the conjurer, the sorcerer—the one who uses magic or words to transform or create. It also reminds us of the responsibility of words and of their manifestations.
The final planetary body connected to the New Moon is Chiminigagua. This is a primordial god, a creator god of the Muisca people of South America. But maybe I should say goddess, because she is feminine.
And this brings us back to the forgotten Goddess/Priestess energy of the New Moon. The one who communicated through the unseen… DNA on one hand and the akashic records and the like on the other…
This New Moon, sift through and organize your understanding of who the Goddess is to you and within you. Does she exist? Is she good or bad? What do you believe, and how do your beliefs inform your manifestations?
Are you creating paths, prisons, or perturbations?
Happy New Moon in Virgo.