This New Moon, coming up late on Sunday evening, January 22nd on the American West Coast, or early Monday morning – like all the New Moons lately – triggers both Jupiter and Uranus on the one hand, and the Chiron-Neptune combination on the other, making it yet another in a long sequence of potent New Moon configurations. Since this New Moon is in Uranus’ own sign of Aquarius, and closely squares Jupiter, the presence of these two planetary archetypes is very pronounced and even startling in their immediacy. Jupiter is a particularly appropriate archetype for combining with Uranus since its exuberance matches that of the trickster planet. Jupiter amps up whatever he touches and Uranus does not need much encouragement to get way out there. Surprising events await us and unexpected epiphanies that will come to us as a result of keeping our eyes wide open.
The Sabian symbol of this New Moon supports this idea. It is “A deserter from the navy” and Marc Edmond Jones has this to say: “the disregard of all consequences for the sake of immediate liberation of the spirit. … Except as a man creates his own allegiances, his destiny has no depth.” This is a message that we all need to take to heart right now since this is in fact 2012 and the time for action is at hand. As Bob Dylan remarked in song during the sixties, the seed period for this turbulent decade of our own:
Come senators, congressmen please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside and it’s ragin’.
It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.
In order for our destiny to have depth, as Marc Edmond Jones puts it, we must stand and be counted, and be counted upon as we ride the rapids of the cultural changes that are upon us, or else be discounted in the world process that we are in any case all part of.
Another factor aspected by this New Moon is Chiron, in conjunction with Neptune and aspected as well by a stationing Mars. With Mars turning to retrograde motion we are driven to look inside ourselves for answers and to meditate on our true motivation. Similarly Chiron, the Wounded Healer, contains within its symbolism the theme of tuning to the inner voice, understanding and forgiving ourselves at the deepest possible level for our reactions to the ancient wrongs that were done to us in the name of socialization and of parenting, in spite of our actual needs. We do well when we can proceed with the resolution to no longer allow ourselves to be beholden to a dead and increasingly irrelevant past; and to heed rather the beat of the distant yet distinct drummer that no longer moves in lock-step with consensus thinking. This is the voice inside us that stands for truth and for moving on with our lives in peace and wholeness, in spite of everything.
