New Moon in Aquarius 12º January 31 2022 10:46 pm MT

New Moon in Aquarius

Happy New Moon in Aquarius, Happy Lunar New Year (welcome year of the water tiger), Happy Imbolc, Venus station direct (Jan 29) and (almost) Mercury station direct (Feb 3)! Phew!

If you noticed that I didn’t do a post for the January moons, thank you for bearing with me and I hope I didn’t leave you hanging. I needed a deep hibernation and cocooning coming into this new year, and I didn’t anticipate I’d be feeling that way.

Although I probably should have… We began the new year deep in Venus’ retrograde through Capricorn—asking us to deeply examine the structures and foundations of everything we value, relationships, love, beauty, art, money, finances, pleasure. As Venus conjoined Pluto (twice so far, with the final one coming March 3), this excavation went deep into the recesses of our past, our subconscious, even into generational and ancestral layers of our psyches and physiology.

Mercury then went retrograde on January 14, also conjoining Pluto three times—adding the need to reassess and reevaluate how we communicate and perceive.

So if you too have been feeling more recalibration than resolution this new year, well just know you’re supported by the stars.

The good news is, this week begins a major shift in this energy and a big push for forward momentum (this carries us into March, where the tides turn even more outward).

February 1st is both the Chinese Lunar New Year and Imbolc, the Celtic festival for the goddess Brigid, at the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, marking the shift from deep winter into the slow opening toward spring.

This period of reopening, especially this year with the Venus and Mercury retrogrades, brings to mind butterflies.

For all our love and admiration for the creatures, rarely do we talk of the process that precedes their transformation, of what metamorphosis may feel like to the caterpillar, asked to dissolve, to break apart, to crack open so newness can be made of its bits.

“We have not much language to appreciate this phase of decay, this withdrawal, this era of ending that must precede beginning. Nor of the violence of metamorphosis, which is often spoken of as though it were as graceful as a flower blooming.” ~ Rebecca Solnit

If these months of transformation (Venus entered her shadow on November 19) have been tough on you, if you have been bruised and bloodied, if the grief of these past years has churned to the surface— hold on just a little longer, the chrysalis is cracking open, the light at the tunnel’s end grows bright.

New visions and versions of yourself are awakening; give them time to unfurl.

With this new moon in tough conversation with both Uranus and Saturn—agents of radical change and of holding to tradition and known structures, respectively—and with Venus and Mercury stationing direct on either side of it, we are entering the final stages of this underworld journey through the parts of your chart ruled by Capricorn and Aquarius.

You were asked to surrender your defenses as you crossed the threshold to the depths, to reckon with all that you had repressed, buried or abandoned. All the parts of yourself too monstrous to bring to the surface, too demonic to see the light of day.

I hope in these past weeks you’ve danced with those demons and made friends with the monsters—that you’ve rediscovered how they are all just parts of yourself, probably young, vulnerable parts at that, doing their best to keep you safe.

In the final leg of the journey, I hope you can lay down your burden and find forgiveness—for yourself first, for others, for all the human ways you’ve failed and been failed.

You are imperfect. And you are lovable still.

Life is so beautiful and painful all at once. Metamorphosis, both heaven and hell.

Crack out of the chrysalis, expand your wings. What sweet relief.

Spark!—a course on empowering creative-erotic expression and accessing radical pleasure Reopens in February

And after all the inward turning and excavation of Venus, planet of values, beauty, art and pleasure, Ansley Clark and I are delighted to announce that we’ll be reopening another round of our writing + creativity course, Spark!

SPARK* IS AN INCLUSIVE COURSE AND COMMUNITY FOCUSED ON ACCESSING AND DEEPENING YOUR RELATIONSHIP TO YOUR INNATE CREATIVE ENERGY AND YOUR EROTIC POWER AND POTENTIAL THROUGH WRITING + ART.

Offering wisdom from two professional writers, a certified sex therapist, a sexual wellbeing activist, a burlesque performer and healing coach, and a boudoir photographer. Spark is a 9-week guided course and community. The course includes lessons, exercises, practices, and support to tap the vast stores of creative energy and power contained in our sexual, erotic, and pleasure-seeking drives. We use writing, movement, and other art forms to explore and expand our erotic power and expression.

Learn more here and we truly hope you’ll join us for this transformative communal experience. A perfect way to come back to yourself, recalibrate and celebrate after Venus’ deep dive.

New Moon in Aquarius Ritual + Writing Prompts

Aquarius New Moon Ritual

As this new moon conjoins Saturn and sits in a square to Uranus, we may dance between the need to want to blow everything up in radical change and newness (Uranus) while at the same time wanting to cling to traditional structures and what has worked for us (Saturn).

A productive use of this internal conflict is to evaluate how our structures, rituals and routines are or can be agents for sustainable stable staying innovation and change.

This ritual, rather than being a single moment, asks you to create a structure or ritual in your life to support what is working well for you while also allowing for growth and change.

1. Choose a habit or routine you’d like to implement, update, shift or innovate. And/or set an intention of something you’d like to build or create in the coming year(s). Choose only ONE thing for this.

2. Consider: what is one thing, one habit, that if you did regularly, daily, would help move you toward bringing this intention to life in the material world?

3. What are ways you can support yourself in doing this daily? Is there a current habit you can link it to?

If, for example, you want to write everyday, do you currently sit at the table and drink a cup of coffee in the morning? Can you bring along your journal or computer and write for 15 minutes while you do?

“Stacking habits” is a very useful (and Saturnian) way to help create neural pathways and train our brains to adapt to new routines.

4. How can you hold yourself accountable to this new habit? Can you tell someone else about it and check in with them? Put it in your phone reminders, add it to your calendar?

5. Now, take 10 minutes and freewrite about what it would look and feel like, once you’ve established and stuck to this routine for one month, for one year. What is the gain, what is the outcome? Why is it worth it? Really feel into your body, imagine with deep sensory detail what it feels like to have held this structure for a period of time and what change it has wrought in your life.

New Moon Writing Prompts

Journal Writing Prompt

Adrift

by Mark Nepo

Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.
This is how the heart makes a duet of
wonder and grief. The light spraying
through the lace of the fern is as delicate
as the fibers of memory forming their web
around the knot in my throat. The breeze
makes the birds move from branch to branch
as this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost
in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh
of the next stranger. In the very center, under
it all, what we have that no one can take
away and all that we’ve lost face each other.
It is there that I’m adrift, feeling punctured
by a holiness that exists inside everything.
I am so sad and everything is beautiful.

Read Adrift by Mark Nepo and then write in response to any of the following questions:

What have you lost in the past two months, and/or the past two years? And what have you gained?
Aquarius is all about the value of the collective, of each individual adding and contributing to the whole. How and where can what you’ve lost and gained be shared with the world to add to the greater good of the collective? How can you use your pain and strength as a gift to the community?
What have you learned about your values since November? What are new values, perhaps surprising or radical ones, that you are now integrating into your system? How can these value systems benefit more than just you, how can they contribute to the whole?

Fiction Writing Prompt

Answer the questions above from the perspective of one of your characters.