Aries New Moon, Debut Blog Post

I kept up a pretty regular astrology blog between 2008-2010. It seems incredible that I was writing about astrology on a near daily basis over ten years ago. I have kept up the study of astrology during this time, to varying intensity, and feel ready to start blogging again. One thing I noticed, whilst perusing my blog posts of a bygone decade, was that it took me a couple of months to get warmed up to a decent level of writing and find my voice.

Therefore this blog, for now, is half future-award-winning-astrology-blog-marking-my-place-within-the-astrology-community-and-the-world and half warm-up-exercise. Basically, I am concentrating primarily on writing and am doing next to no design or promotional work, hence the lacklustre WordPress theme. It’s open to whoever may be interested, please feel free to share should you so desire. Any feedback whether in the form of comments or personal emails are also most welcome.

As I have not written astrology for an audience for some time I have a lot to write about all that is going on. The first draft of this post ended up being nearly 4000 words long. I’m going to keep it to around a thousand and then post another thousand words tomorrow and then the next day etc.

Everything I write is aimed at someone who has little to no knowledge of astrology but who is interested in the subject enough to begin learning some bits and bobs. However, once a week coinciding with the phases of the Moon (New, First Quarter, Full, Last Quarter) I will tend towards a bit more of a weather report approach where I explain what’s up without using too much technical jargon.

I am going to experiment with the format but my initial plan is to highlight the Sun – Moon cycle, as this is a great way to learn about the basic rhythms of astrology and see how it plays out in one’s life.

My first astrology blog post in 7 and a half years coincides with an Aries New Moon, which is exact Monday, 16th April, 01:56 (UTC). This is significant in that Aries is the first sign of the zodiac and the annual New Moon in that sign represents a new beginning in a new astrological year. The freshest start one can get in the astrological calendar.

New Moons represent the end of one lunar cycle and the beginning of another, it is when the Moon and the Sun share the same area of the sky, the same degree of the zodiac. You can’t see the Moon because the brightness of the Sun outshines it during the daytime.

With just a little bit of analysis and reflection we can trace the pattern of the lunar cycle in our lives. In the days leading up to a New Moon issues raised and hopefully resolved in the previous lunar cycle are put to bed. The days of and following the New Moon are a time when we can set the tone for the month ahead, look for clues as to what is going to occur and how this might be handled. Feel the fresh energy in the air and make the most of it by heading into the direction you wish to travel.

Aries is the sign that welcomes spring back to the Northern Hemisphere, filled with direct forward moving energy, bursting with life. I envision the trees and plants starting to bud filled with all this energy potential ready to explode into life. This is the time of year when we are motivated to spring clean and start afresh with new fertile energy ready for whatever the future holds. A great time to begin new ventures or dust things off and start again, a great time for my debut blog post.

As well as the New Moon itself there are three other major events happening in Aries right now, two of these happen within hours of the New Moon, the other happens within the same few degrees. The New Moon therefore acts as a focal point, bringing all of these events into one.

Amongst other things we have Mercury in early Aries resuming forward motion just 17 hours prior to the New Moon, ending it’s recent retrograde phase. Then 30 hours after the New Moon, minor planet Chiron enters Aries for the first time since 1977. The New Moon occurs clustered towards the end of Aries with dwarf planet Eris and regular planet Uranus. Eris and Uranus have been sharing the same narrow area of Aries for a couple of years now, signifying the mayhem that has been 2016 & 2017. However, Uranus is preparing to leave Aries for Taurus in May. This New Moon acts as a send off to the long lasting conjunction between these two planets.

Each of these events will be covered in greater detail in posts over following days. For now though a weather report of what it all means.

Our relationship with technology, the internet and social media has exploded – our consciousness and in popularity – over the past several years. I’m not sure if us humans were quite ready for the mind bending effects being plugged into the internet for all our waking hours would have. Whether we were ready or not it happened and will continue to happen, we can’t put that genie back in the bottle. What we can do though is take a moment to look at how our behaviour has been modified by our technology over the last 5 years or so.

Perhaps the last few weeks have revealed some personal insights into how we relate to and through our phones and social media. Much has certainly been revealed into what has been happening behind the scenes at Facebook. Now is a good time to apply to our lives whatever it is that has been learned over the past couple of weeks. We can now start moving towards the future we see for ourselves rather than the future that has been thrust upon us by our media technologies and those who manipulate them.

There is set to be a burst of fresh energy sweeping in over the next week, which will feel good and relieve some of the frustrations and awkwardness of the the last fortnight. A note of caution; it is possible to get so caught up in how good this feels that you might miss the chance to raise your sails and catch the new wind coming in. Even if you do decide to just chill and enjoy the sun there will be other opportunities down the line.

Working out who it is we are and what it is we want has become increasingly difficult in our times but this New Moon acts as a chance to do just that. What we learn now and begin to put into practice will come in useful as the year moves forward. So take just a little while out of your day – preferably away from any screens – to feel yourself out, work out where you’re at and where you wanna go. Then set about going there.

All photos by Anna