I overheard a conversation yesterday. A girl was on her phone, angry and frustrated, complaining… but more than complaining about her biology partner. This guy unwittingly spent 20 minutes looking through a microscope at nothing- she was furious. He wouldn’t let her look. He wouldn’t let her help. He wouldn’t let her participate. “That guy hates women,” she said. And went on to express her disgust at him looking at a blank plate on a microscope without even realizing it… Looking for something that wasn’t there.
In her mind, he wanted the power. He wanted the glory, and he had little respect for her thoughts and opinions. And more than her disdain for his behaviour towards women, she was upset because this guy was negatively impacting her education.
I’m in Oxford, and the students here mean business!
I could hear it behind everything that she was saying… I could hear her resolve and intent. This man will not stop me from my worth, from my value, and from my education.
As I looked at the chart for today’s New Moon, this conversation stood out! It was a microcosm of the macrocosm of what is going on. The conflict was between two people. Two students. A man and a woman. But it embodied a greater social conflict. And one that this New Moon highlights. It’s all about relationships, power & feminine Worth
The New Moon is at 17 degrees of Libra, the sign of relationships, balance, fairness, and justice. It is one of the signs that is ruled by Venus, the feminine goddess of love, values, and worth.
Goddess Energy and Feminine Worth
Some of the other Goddesses are with this New Moon. It is opposite Vesta in Aries and square Ceres in Cancer. This brings in the energies of being driven by your own inner passions and drives, sometimes to the exclusion of other people, as well as the inability or difficulty in nurturing and meeting our own needs based on what we may have learned from our mothers or our mothers’ mothers. It’s the lineage of women in our families or our culture that impacts how we go about resolving the conflict in relationships right now. If we learned to quietly suffer, we may rebel. If we learned to subversively use our power, we may find ourselves cooking up a witchy spell. But if we learned to be strong and empowered, we may find an opportunity for deeper learning about ourselves: how we get our needs met, how we pursue our passions, and how we operate within relationships.
As mentioned, the Libra New Moon is ruled by Venus, and Venus is currently in Scorpio and retrograde. This on its own is challenging. It makes us prone to jealousy; we may confront hidden desires, rage, and issues of trust and power. And situations will arise that bring these types of feelings to the forefront. Venus is also making a perfect square to Mars in Leo and is also square to Pluto in Aquarius, and this intensifies all of these feelings to a place where we are likely to act unconsciously.
And the weird thing… behind it all might be a sexual tension or a strange attraction that brings out the worst… I distinctly remember a boy in middle school tripping me and giving me titty twisters… apparently because he liked me???? This is the kind of energy that Venus square Mars brings up. Add in Pluto in Aquarius, and not only do we amplify the dynamic, but we also do so at a larger societal level as well.
The personal is the political—our experiences as women, with the feminine, are not just a personal problem, but a larger problem with the power structure.
A collective intervention might steam out of control.
At its heart, the energy highlights the difficulty we feel with the power of our feelings. Attraction, jealousy, sexual power… And it’s not just men… It’s the masculine within us all.
The Sabian symbol: Two men placed under arrest. Rudhyar says that this symbol represents “A breakdown in the constructive relationship between the individual and society, and the expectable result.” At the heart of it, the Sabian symbol is about facing consequences.
And that’s where Thereus comes in.
The asteroids involved at this New Moon are Thereus and Hera.
Before I go into the story of Thereus, let me first mention Hera. Hera is the goddess of marriage, but she was constantly jealous and vengeful of her forever-cheating husband, Zeus. Her appearance here with the New Moon solidifies that it is one about relationships, trust, power, and the emotions that come from them.
And now for the story of Thereus and its importance at this New Moon.
Strangely, when I looked up the myths of Thereus, Tereus came up. I wondered what the difference was. One was a centaur, and the other was a king… and though they have no connection to each other in mythology, linguistically, they are cousins: both derive from the same Proto-Indo-European root which means “to hold, keep, watch”. For the centaur Thereus, this was emphasized in hunting—Thereus was a centaur who dragged bears out of their dens and carried them home alive to his cave. For Tereus, the King, it was meant to emphasize guardianship… which is a very forgiving word for this king because his guardianship in the end was obsessive and predatory!
Since Tereus the king was also predatory, I will tell you that story, even though the asteroid is about the bear-hunting centaur… Thereus with the New Moon highlights feelings of being hunted, captured, and silenced.
The story goes that Tereus was the King of Thrace (or Phocis) and husband to Procne. He is infamous for his brutal crime: deceiving her father by claiming Procne had died to win the hand of Procne’s sister, Philomela, whom he then raped and silenced by cutting out her tongue.
I know… to hold, keep, watch – definitely predatory!
Philomela revealed the atrocity to her sister Procne through an embroidered tapestry, leading the sisters to cook up a plan of revenge. They kill Tereus’s son, Itys, and serve him to his father.
Feels very Venus in Scorpio…
When Tereus found out what they did, he pursued them with an axe. But the gods intervened to end the violence by transforming all of them into birds: Tereus into a hoopoe (or hawk), Procne into a nightingale, and Philomela into a swallow. It is said that the hawk symbolized his predatory pursuit, forever chasing the sisters he can never catch. The nightingale’s mournful, nocturnal song ensured the tragedy was never forgotten. The swallow, a voiceless bird, mirrored the tongue Tereus cut out.
The consequences are real. And at this New Moon, there may be outside intervention that imposes those consequences. It’s therefore worth it to think through the consequences to the conclusion before acting.
There are various versions of the tale, and in Ovid’s inversion, Philomela actually becomes the nightingale – and the sister whose speech was stolen is now the bird most celebrated for its beautiful song.
Philomela adds an interesting and useful aspect to the story and the New Moon energies. Philomela could not speak, but she was able to communicate with tapestry. This reminds me of the stories of African American women who used quilts to communicate information to slaves about how to escape to freedom on the Underground Railroad, and other stories of escape routes mapped in braided hair. The New Moon makes a sextile to Jupiter in Leo, which represents opportunities hidden in beauty, play, and creative expression. So while we may feel hunted and captured, within the experience lies a creative opportunity. And incidentally, asteroid Philomela is within 5 degrees of Jupiter in Leo.
The masculine and the cycles of Mars are a major feature of Binary Star Astrology. Through this work, we come to a deeper understanding of how Mars operates, offering us a pathway to consciously work with this energy within ourselves.
In my recent post on the equinox, I mentioned the energy lines going through three important cities – London, Rome and Washington.
As it turns out, I had a chance to be in Rome for the fall Equinox and Virgo Eclipse.
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In my equinox post, I mentioned that geodetically, the Ceres locational astrology line runs through Italy and is very close to Rome. Ceres is the asteroid associated with mothering and the nurturing principle. It also symbolizes “protective forces that foster growth and development”. In my astrology software program (SolarFire), it says that “Ceres has a distinct bearing on the well-being of ordinary people, and research has proven it is one of the most important fundamental symbols of the spirit and practice of democracy”. I’m unsure of the exact research that was done to demonstrate this… but it seems to ring true. Ceres seems to illustrate how we care for one another in relationships and in society. Food security and nurturing are positive expressions, while smothering or devouring are negative ones, not just in families, but also in our power structures. Indeed, how we are mothered has a powerful impact on how we view and operate in the world… we bring our fulfilled or unfulfilled mother needs to our work, intimate relationships, and our communities.
When you look at our world and how power structures operate… You see it perfectly. The mother is out of balance.
Our visit to Rome provided us with these themes, and we had a chance to bring healing to the imbalanced mother, raging mother, as well as the divine mother, Mary! Mary is an archetypal symbol of the Virgin in Catholicism. And, what better time for this healing than at the eclipse at the 29th degree of Virgo, the Virgin!
Our trip was perfectly coordinated by the universe and our guides… the theme of Mother was guided, protected and alchemized by the Porta Alchemica, healed on Tiber Island and anchored at the ancient Etruscan Tempio di Demetra, Demetra being the Greek version of Ceres.
It was not easy! The energy was thick, confused, frustrated and circular. There was a train/metro strike to frustrate our process, poor cellphone coverage and constantly drained batteries – a metaphor? Everything took 4 or 5 times longer than it should have. We saw nothing of tourist Rome and seemed to be only focused on the task. To be sure… we didn’t even realize until midway through that we were there to work!
Our host was Simon, the author of the Tychos! We were grateful to have been invited to stay at his villa situated on the hills of Frascati overlooking Rome. Magical moments included a perfect view of the Vatican, stunning view of the morning rise of the Venus, Moon and Regulus conjunction, breathtaking sunsets and a chance to view the sun setting through a telescope… the Sun looks wild through a lens! (also daily gelato and, of course, amazing Italian food!)
Our first important encounter was with the Porta Alchemica (Alchemical Door). Macca, who was travelling with me, sent an Instagram video of the door a couple of days before our trip, but when I asked her about it, she didn’t remember sending it. Strangely, she sent it to my personal account, something she usually does not do. So we figure it was angelic guidance! The two statues of Bes surrounding the alchemical door beckoned us as we walked by on the day before the eclipse. I recognized the door immediately… as it turns out, they would become our protectors and the alchemy needed to move through the dense, thick, circular and confusing energy present in Rome. I didn’t know it at the time, but Bes is the protector of mothers, childbirth and children. Bes was said to ward off evil spirits and protect families from misfortune and disease. Bes is also connected to music, dance, and festivities.
My photo’s taken through the locked gates
On the day of the eclipse, we visited Tiber Island. This island has a temple dedicated to Aesculapius, the god of healing. It is also the location of a powerful energy node. While there, a theme emerges around the impact of the imbalanced, devouring or disempowered mother and all of the ways that the distorted nurturing principle harms both men and women; the inability for boys to grow up and be real men – to properly individuate and lead – the momma’s boy (stereotypically Italian… but also shows up in all cultures), as well as the neglected, disapproved of boy child who is later destructive in the world. Girls who grow up to be overly responsible women and the resentment of women as mothers rather than wives in relationships. In Rome and in Catholicism, Mary is honoured. The feminine disappears in other Christian traditions, and yet even in Catholicism, it’s Mary waist up and Magedene waist down; the mother is relegated to the upper chakras, disconnected from her entirety. Mother or whore!
As we mediated, a couple of children appeared. Macca heard the boy say to his mom, “You know why I’m not afraid”… this was a good sign!
Macca shared a message about the role of Judas. Judas betrayed Jesus, but that was his role. He needed to be the catalyst for change. It encouraged us to look at any grievances we had against those who had harmed us (whether an unhealthy mother or an angry man) differently – as catalysts for change. Some of us felt pain in our backs and in our hearts, others in the lower regions/groin. Eventually, the pain shifted and lifted in us all… Panacea showed up.. The universal cure!
A message came through Amber, a woman who was there meditating with us; Mother Mary had to watch Jesus go through all that he did. Her role was to hold space and watch her adolescent son struggle and repeat patterns. Her role was to see him struggle, repeating patterns, rolling the boulder up the hill like Sisyphus. As a mother, her role was to stand back and watch him, her son, go through the pain on his way to growth. That is the role of the healthy mother.
We travelled to our last location the day after the equinox. Tempio di Demetra. It was another day of challenging transportation, and something that should have taken a short time took five times longer. Half our group arrived at the temple in the morning, and just as they left, Macca and I arrived. We found the temple hidden under large cave-like rocks. We lit candles and incense and sat in meditation. Inside the temple was one powerful spot. First, I sat there and then Macca. I pull out a crystal that I had been carrying with me through many locations dedicated to Mary and Mary Magdalene. A crack of thunder and lightning let us know we were complete. And then we had sun showers!
Working with astrology and energy nodes provides energy for accelerated healing. As we heal ourselves, we heal our world. At this moment in time, when society seems to be falling apart, the healed mother is a promise of a return to a balanced world. The daughter of Ceres/Demeter is Percephone in the Roman myth and Prosephina in the Greek… Proserpere is a Latin word that means “to emerge”
We are emerging from the darkness into the light. The mother is coming back into balance.
Before I end this post, I want to return to the alchemical door. By a strange twist of occurrence, I had with me, when I would not have normally, gold, silver and copper. The alchemy on the door speaks of us being assisted by the earth, its precious metals and their planetary relations! To me, this was a confirmation of my new foray into working with energy lines and locational astrology! Often, when we do a ceremony connected to the equinoxes, we will bring crystals and incense (which are made of plants), but this experience invited us to also bring in the use of precious metals, which are highly conductive and alchemical.
You too can work with this energy! If you are interested in having a reading to find out your personal locational lines, or how you can work with the present astrology and the energy of the earth in your sacred travel, individually or in groups, you can check out my offerings here.
Offering and Services
Secondly, in a synchronistic meeting at the airport, we met someone that Macca knew who had visited, mediated and obtained a perfect picture of the same alchemical door…. It is important to note that you cannot get access to the alchemical door, and the best we could get was a blurry side view of it. Earlier in the year, Elena had been meditating in front of the padlocked door and with her eyes closed, she heard the door unlock. It was a woman with high security-coveted access… the result was a perfect picture of the door! I would like to credit Elana for the picture; you can check out her work at elenadominguez.com. Elena is a Holistic Therapist and Shaman and works with Pachamama (Mother Earth).
About the alchemical door that the two Bes statues were protecting:
At the top of Porta Alchemica - Top roundel: “The center is in the triangle of the center. Three marvels: God and man; mother and virgin; three-in-one.” (Unity of opposites.)
Lintel (just under roundel): Hebrew Ruach Elohim (”Spirit of God”) + “The dragon guards the magic garden; only the true hero can enter.”
Right jamb (bottom → top):
Saturn/Lead: Black crows give birth to white doves = wisdom comes.
Jupiter/Tin: Geometry and symbols are useless to the uninitiated.
Mars/Iron: Burn with water, wash with fire = transformation.
Left jamb (top → bottom):
Venus/Copper: Make earth fly, transform torrents into stone.
Mercury: Azoth + fire = Diana revealed (silver purified).
Antimony: The dead son revives, returns from fire as king.
Threshold (sill): Palindrome: Si sedes non is (”If you sit, you don’t go / If you don’t sit, you go”).
Base: Hidden work of the true sage = open the earth so it brings healing.
Originally lost plate: Initials spelled VITRIOL
classic alchemical motto: “Visit the interior of the earth, and by rectifying, you will find the hidden stone.” it’s an alchemical doorway mapping the stages of transformation (black → white → red = rebirth) framed with mystical riddles
Templio di Demetra
If you ever make it to the temple, hold the crystal for informational downloads! If you are in Rome, send me a message for directions to the temple. It shows up on
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.
Virgo as St James the Lesser
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?
