The Moon will begin a new phase with the Sun at 28° 11′ Scorpio on November 19 at 10:47 p.m. West Coast time, a couple of days before the Sun will move on into Sagittarius. We’re entering the darkest part of the year in the northern hemisphere.
Scorpio is our fixed water sign. It has a reputation for mysteriousness, though in astrology, every planet, sign, and house is a goldmine of possible meanings. Scorpio’s inclination is to want to get to the bottom of things, whether by investigating hidden realities or breaking silent taboos.
It’s a cliché to note that when the Moon is in Scorpio, it’s a good time for “shadow work,” the excavating of one’s usually unconscious emotions—not to put them on public display but to take an honest look at one’s inner drives and wishes. The chart for the November 19/20 lunation puts shadow work squarely on the agenda.
For starters, the Sun and Moon are tightly conjoined with Mercury, also at 28 Scorpio. Mercury is in one of its three (or sometimes four) yearly three-week periods of apparent retrograde motion (November 9 to 29). And while pop astrology has put a lot of people in a twist about a supposedly bad thing called “Mercury retrograde,” these are time periods more usefully thought of as an invitation to sink deep into a review of one’s mental (Mercury) processes.
During each period of Mercury’s travel backwards, there’s a moment when it conjoins precisely with the Sun—which will happen a few hours after the November 19/20 New Moon. This moment is called cazimi, when Mercury is said to enter “the heart of the Sun.” It’s a moment, symbolically, of renewal for Mercury’s miraculous functions of thought, intuition, communicative exchange, and healing.
Fortuitously, this particular Mercury cazimi will occur while the Moon is in a dark phase of also having just met up with the Sun. If ever there’s a time to, metaphorically, plant seeds for all manner of nascent possibilities—especially in areas of learning, writing, and speaking—this New Moon is one such time.
All the more so because this New Moon is aligned in a close opposition with Uranus, a force of revelatory breakthroughs, at 29° 9 ‘ of earth sign Taurus. Uranus, a slow-moving planet very far from the Sun, has a seven-year orbit and only recently, in July, moved from Taurus into Gemini, Mercury’s home air sign. As of November 7, Uranus has dipped back into Taurus for the next five months, before it will enter Gemini again on April 26, for about the next seven years.
Uranus, by sign and by whatever house it’s traveling through in a person’s birth chart, brings the element of surprise. Opposite the November 19/20 Scorpio New Moon, there may be disruptive exposes, in public realms and/or coming up from the recesses of one’s own psyche.
Meanwhile, at this lunation, Saturn, symbolically a Great Teacher of knowing limits, along with Neptune, the dissolver of boundaries, have recently moved backward into Pisces for a few months. Saturn and Neptune are making a tense square with the Sun and Moon and an encouraging sextile with change-agent Uranus. All of this is to say: there may be something heavy and yet ultimately compassionate for each of us to be learning at this time.
All of these transits are occurring in the midst of an aspect in play all this autumn and for the rest of this year: the harmonious Grand Water Trine formed by Mercury in Scorpio; Saturn/Neptune in Pisces; and Jupiter in Cancer. So many planets in the same element—water—over so many months make this season one for focusing on emotional strength and security.
Scorpio‘s ruling (or better phrased, guiding) planet is Mars, and unlike most of the planets at this time, Mars is moving in direct motion, in the on-and-upward fire sign of Sagittarius. Mars in Sagittarius is a call to take decisive action with faith in the Big Picture of things. Mars is also making squares with the Moon’s lunar nodal axis, what evolutionary astrologer Mark Jones calls an “oscillating line of destiny,” around which we are continuously wobbling back and forth, from what is never really just our “past” and what is barely visible as an unknown “future.”
If there’s any message as the Sun ends its last few days in Scorpio before entering Sagittarius on November 21, it’s that the search for what’s true and meaningful has no beginning, and no end.
Blessings for the Scorpio New Moon!
~ Sara
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