Category: New Moon

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Scorpio New Moon 2020 – Transformation is certain, it’s easier when you’re on board; NEW book for 2021!!

Hello Dear Ones, it’s been quite the year hasn’t it? I hope you and those you care about are doing as best as you can during this time.

This year definitely hasn’t been an easy one for me, but I’m getting through it. I have a new job, new place to live, new fuzzy roommates, and new anxieties on top of all the other ones. The last few months have really been a recalibration for me, understanding what it is that I really need, understanding my energy levels, prioritizing my actions, and being really okay if I can’t get through everything. Some days I have more energy than others and on those days I try to get ahead a little bit and set things up so Future Me has an easier day.

Book of My Shadows for 2021 — coming soon!!

One thing I wish I had this year was a Book of My Shadows for 2020. I didn’t write one last year because, well, it was a hard year, too, in very different ways. I could have used it this year as one way to ground and orient myself while I do my work. I’m happy to report that I’m feeling more like myself, taking the time that I need, and have felt inspired to write. I’m just about done with Book of My Shadows for 2021 and I expect to ship physical copies the first week of December! You can preorder your copy today in my store or by clicking here.

Ride that wave

What transformations have you had this year? This year I’ve learned to ease expectations. I’ve always kept my expectations low in general, in part to prevent disappointment, another part to let go of control, but this year really has just been riding the wave and seeing where I end up. I’ve also shifted my perspective from being an unwilling passenger on the wave towards oblivion to being the captain of the ship. I’m still going wherever this wave is taking me but choosing to have a say in how I react and respond. I’m choosing to find things to be grateful for every day and allowing myself to feel personal joy at the same time I feel collective anxiety and sorrow.

How are you celebrating your transformations? Take some time today to celebrate yourself in some way!

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New Moon Leo 2020 – Create some love for yourself

Hello! It’s been a little while.

It’s taken me a few months to remember who I am and what I’m even doing here. In my last post, I was exploring what it means to be calm, and discovering what that even feels like. Then a month went by and the world exploded again, and sense of calmness was tossed into upheaval once again. Because I thrive more in chaos than stillness, I rode that wave and involved myself in any way that I could. But then I crashed, and crashed hard.

I was forced to find the calmness. I was being told that this is the lesson I need to learn, and I needed to pay attention. Once I found that calm again, I was able to have a clearer picture of what was and was not working for me. I’ve cut out what wasn’t working as much as possible and doubled down on things that do work. Things are looking much more differently than I expected, but that’s okay. I’m getting through the pandemic and all the social unrest the best I can.

This does not mean that I haven’t been doing my work, however. I’ve noticed that many people bury their head in the sand when they want to take a break because feeling uncomfortable is too, well, uncomfortable. Maybe the discomfort of growth is my baseline feeling of the chaos I need to survive and that’s why I’m always learning. Maybe it’s just my nature to keep improving so I can be the best version of myself possible. I honestly don’t think it really matters why, but I do think it’s important for everyone to always be working on becoming the best versions of themselves.

I share all this because the reason I started this blog was because I created something for myself to continue growing, and thought that sharing it with others might offer some insight for anyone else who might be exploring themselves and how they relate to the world. The first Book of My Shadows I wrote for myself to help myself. Then I was told that it could be helpful for others, and I shared it. When I find myself straying from that, I find myself not enjoying writing or even exploring the things that I typically enjoy to write about and explore. So I’m reeling myself in sharing what works for me and sharing it, not because I think my way is the best way, but is just one way for others to try on and keep or toss aside as needed.

Doing something amazing, or helpful, or amazingly helpful for ourselves is totally Leo energy. Many of us put the needs of others before our own, or don’t feel right doing something for ourselves that we would do for other people. How many times do we encourage the ones we love but discourage ourselves in the next breath? This new moon I would like anyone who feels that to flip it around and encourage yourself to do something for yourself first. And if it is something that can help others after you have full helped yourself, then share it.

Tomorrow’s Leo new moon has some challenging aspects to it, so keep flexibility and fluidity in mind as you consider some of the following prompts:

  1. Something I have been wanting to do for myself (make a list if there are multiple!):
  2. What are the steps I need to take to actually do thing for myself?
  3. What blockers exist and what can I do to work around them?
  4. Something I can do today to love myself:
  5. Something I can create today:

Take some time for yourself and see what you can create. Leo is creative and playful energy, so find something that is fun for you make and express yourself. Then share it with others!

One thing that I’ll be working on creating for myself is Book of Shadows for 2021. I’m really missing it reading the prompts and doing the work every full and new moon. So I’ll be creating that for myself for next year, and sharing it with you as well! I’ll keep you updated!

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Aries New Moon 2020 – Courage for a new day

Today is the Aries New Moon. The energy it brings is that of a fresh start, new ideas, and the excitement of what is to come.

I am not in the mood for this kind of energy right now. You might be, and that’s awesome. This might not be the post for you, however. This post is for those of us who might be struggling a bit more than usual these days. Many of us are isolated due to the current pandemic, and with this isolation we might be dealing with a lot more than the fears of what the future will hold, but all of our shadows that we carry in our psyches on a normal day.

The New Moon is conjunct Chiron, which is why we might be feeling our wounds more intensely. Astrology King explains it best:

“Chiron represents wounding and healing. It is a deep wound in your soul and also the ability to heal yourself and others. The new moon conjunct Chiron exposes your most painful wounds, physical and emotional.”

Astrology King

Chiron’s energy is compounding our fears of the future. But Chiron also offers us the tools we need to overcome our fears, even the ones that we are feeling today.

I have a visualization for unlocking the strength of Chiron, but please only do so if you are in a safe place to be doing interpersonal work. Skip it if you are feeling triggered or in the middle of an emotional flashback, I do not want to exacerbate any struggles you are currently experiencing.

The glyph for Chiron looks like a skeleton key:

See the source image

Again, if you aren’t in an emotionally, physically, and mentally safe place for introspection, skip ahead past the next image. If you are feeling safe, take some time today to close your eyes and imagine Chiron in the form of this skeleton key coming to visit you. Its purpose is to show you what you have survived thus far, and how strong you are for surviving all you have overcome. Receive the key however best works for you: in your hand, in your lap, however you might be able to sense and feel it. Notice everything you can about it. What does it feel like? How big is it? How heavy does it feel? What temperature is it? What color is it? What else can you notice?

As you hold the key, it starts vibrating and some sparkly white energy seems to be emitting from it. It moves up and around your body and safely scans you looking for the lock it belongs to. This lock is located somewhere you might be protecting your inner child, all your fears, and all the struggles you have experienced thus far in life. The New Moon in Aries, as annoying as it might feel right now, sends down the courage and bravery needed to put the key in the lock and turn it. Note the place in your body where you find the lock.

You hear a click and a door to your psyche opens. Inside, you see statues. This is not what you expected to see. Maybe you thought opening this door to your psyche would unleash all the hungry ghosts or that there would be dragons guard their hoard. But no, the room is still and filled with statues like museum. Some are stone, some are marble, some might even be bronze or clay. Some are perfectly shaped as if Michelangelo himself created this perfect piece of art. Some are amorphous and lack form and structure. At the base of each of the statues is a placard that describes the piece. You see that each statue is a fear, a shadow, a trauma, or some other hidden-away piece of your existence. You realize that in this room you can move closer to each an observe it safely. You can keep your distance as far as you need to, but you know it’s perfectly safe to get right up to it and look at its details up close. These are statues and cannot and will not move. Move around this room, observing each of the statues you see, and make sure you read the placard, so you know what it is you are looking at.

Once you have examined all the statues, move back to the door and look at the entire room. Notice how you are standing in a place with all your fears, shadows, etc. and can acknowledge each one. You might even see some beauty in some of them. You realize while looking at the room that you that you have survived all your previous interactions – that’s how you can be here looking back at them now. The Aries New Moon once again fills you with courage and bravery to know that when you step out of this room, you can keep going in the mundane world knowing that you have the strength to face your fears.

Step back through the door, close it, and lock it. You notice there’s a way for you to label or decorate this door however you wish. Take some time do that now. When you have finished, put Chiron’s key someplace safe, and know you can come back anytime you need to remember that your fears, struggles, all the things, are here with you but you but you have the strength to be with all of them. You have named each one and stood next to them all. You were able to get as close as you need. Their purpose is to show you what you can survive, and they are there when you need a reminder.

See the source image

Let Chiron’s key serve as a reminder that you possess a great deal of strength to get through these unimaginable times. You have survived thus far, and it is possible to keep surviving through this unstable time.

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Pisces New Moon 2020 — Our own hero’s journey

Today’s New Moon is one of my favorites, and is basically the poster child for this blog. Pisces rules the depths of our subconscious where our shadows dwell. These places are complicated and can be dark, making them easy to want to avoid. Think of all the myths about the hero’s journey and all the trials and tribulations faced along the way, finally ending at the biggest challenge of them all. In most of those myths our hero triumphs, so know you can go on your own hero’s journey and not only survive, but return to the world that you know victorious and changed for the better.

Mars trine Uranus makes a complimentary aspect with the Moon, adding courage and cunning to our journey. Today we’re kicking ass AND taking names. This influence is perfect to take a bit of a risk — don’t be afraid to dive deep.

In your journal, jot down the pieces of your personality and behaviors you have been afraid to examine. As these things surface, do your best not to judge them. Instead, pretend you are a scientist and treat each bit of information as a data point, our feelings and behaviors are only information, after all.

Next, think about the reasons these pieces feel so scary to deal with. Would society judge you a certain way? Are you ashamed of them? Once you find an answer see if you can ask why that answer is, then see how far down the rabbit hole you can go.

Once that rabbit hole ends, and yourself if this fear is a real threat. Sometimes it is, but most times the stories in our heads have us believing things that aren’t true. Either way, find someone who can help support you face these fears if you need some help.

Now that you have the parts you want to examine and an understanding of why they’ve been too scary to want to deal with them, see what you can learn. Use your favorite search engine and see what articles come up. Take each one with a grain of salt, though, not everyone experiences things in the same way and there’s a whole lot of theories but never enough facts. See what rings true for yourself and see what patterns you can uncover.

Finally, write about your own journey. Where did it start? What trials did you face? Knowing what you know now, what’s your best course of action? How can you hold yourself accountable?

Extra credit: share this story with someone close to you.

Acknowledging the dark places of our subconscious can be daunting, but it is survivable. Take some time today for your hero’s journey and see how it can change you.

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Sagittarius New Moon 2019 — Aiming for what we want to become

Holy crow, where has the time gone? We are almost at the end of 2019! How does this make you feel? I’m been feeling pretty excited recently, even if I can foresee some undesired changes ahead in the next year. I feel like I’m really starting to come into who I’ve always wanted to be over the last 11 months or so. I’ve had some trials and tribulations that have sparked a lot of perspective shifts and growth, and I can’t wait to take everything I have done for myself and move into the next year. I’m excited to see what I make of all this!

Take an honest look back through your year and note what significant changes have happened for you. What areas have you experienced the most growth? What goals have you accomplished? Where do you feel you have fallen short?

Tuesday’s New Moon in Sagittarius will be a great time to start taking our next steps in who we are becoming. Sagittarius is the sign of dreams, learning, long journeys, optimism, resilience, movement, and mind expansion (to name a few). It is ruled by Jupiter, the planet of growth, expansion, prosperity, and good fortune. These influences make it a great time to ask, “what is the best version of myself that I can become?”

The best version of yourself is not the version that comes from society. It is not worried about what others think in the realms of capitalism. It’s not about your status. It is not about living up to a bullshit standard of beauty that’s impossible to obtain or sustain. It is about understanding where you have come from, what you are capable of, what resistance you face from others and within yourself, and what would help you live a life that is aligned to your ideals and your values as opposed to those society deems appropriate (and if your ideals and values align to society in a way that makes your heart sing, awesome!).

What dreams do you have for yourself? Who would you become if you had the freedom to be however you wanted? What are some things you can do to become this person?

I’ve recently tried to do something that I had always dreamed about. And it was fun, until it wasn’t anymore. I was afraid of trying out my dream because I was afraid of failing at it. But after doing the work, and it was a lot of work, I realized that the dream that I had was actually something quite different than I thought it was. I realized there was something about the idea that I loved and not the kind of work that was needed to manifest that specific idea. Which is great because now I know! And I wouldn’t have figured it out if I didn’t give it a go.

It’s okay to change. Our minds, our thinking, our lives, anything. And it’s definitely okay to change after you’ve learned something new that shifts how the world works for you. Are there shifts in your life that you have been wanting to make? This is definitely the time to do so!

Take some time to think about the shifts you are wanting to make in your life by making a list. Then answer the following prompts in your journal:

  1. What fears do I have about becoming the person who I want to be?
  2. Where do these fears come from?
  3. What are some ways that these fears are unfounded?
  4. What are aspects of my life that feel in opposition with whom I want to become?
  5. Are there any ways that I can lessen this opposition?
  6. What are some actions I can take this week to put my dreams into motion?

Finally, spend some time future writing as the person whom you want to become. What is their life like? What do they do all day? Where do they go? How do they deal with tricky situations? How do they feel when doing this? What goes through their mind? How do they react? Be as detailed as possible! Journaling this way helps wire the synopses in our brain and can help build a foundation for the rest of our psyche to move into to become what we’ve always desired to be.

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Scorpio New Moon 2019 – Initiation

I’m sure it comes as no surprise to those who know me that I’m in love with the Scorpio New Moon. Even though my own Moon sign is in Virgo, it’s in my 8th house, which is the house ruled by Scorpio. I have, indeed, been called too passionate, too intense, too much, and I’m finally at a point in my life where I’m like, “Fuck yeah I am!” If I can’t put my blood, sweat, and tears into something I generally don’t believe it’s worth doing (though I do know that there are lots of things worth doing that don’t require every drop of my soul, but I digress).

I’ve been through a lot this year. Past few years. This lifetime. Probably the last few lifetimes. You probably have, too. This New Moon let’s take a look at all the progress that we’ve made and step into this next phase like an enraged Scorpio who just set fire to their ex lover’s car. I generally dislike using these negative tropes because I feel like we Scorpios get a really bad rap, but the feeling I’m looking to embody is one of knowing that, while we’re not perfect, we can totally own our flaws AND all the badassery that is in every single one of our cells at the same damn time.

Scorpio is the sign that rules initiations. While we typically think of an initiation has a ceremony that has to take place to join some sort of secret society, the word really just means “the action of beginning something.” What if you took time to make your own initiation ritual? You don’t have to experience something monumental to go through an initiation. Besides, isn’t purposefully stepping into your daily life owning all of your badassery monumental? There are 3 parts to a basic initiation:

  1. Acknowledging who you have been
  2. Acknowledging who you are now
  3. Setting an intention for who you are becoming

What is something you can do for your initiation? You can do this while making your morning coffee, taking your daily bath or shower, walking your dog. Anything can become an initiation if you put the intention into it!

You were yesterday made you who you are today. Step into who you’ll be tomorrow with full confidence that you are exactly where you are supposed to be.

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Libra New Moon 2019 – Starting a new relationship with yourself

As I was having dinner with a great friend last night, the conversation turned to relationships, as it always does. Along with verbally processing annoyances we experience in our romantic relationships (or lack thereof), we always seem to gravitate to explore why our relationships of any kind exist in the first place. My friend shared that, on her grandmother’s deathbed, her final wish bestowed to her mother was to “find a husband who will take care of you.” Not, “find someone you love who loves you just as much,” or “follow your dreams,” but, “You probably can’t take care of yourself, so make it someone else’s job to do it.” This is all implied, of course, as I wasn’t there, and I do not have a lot of additional context. But this does align with a lot of the expectations society has placed on women and exemplifies the chains that many people who are femme presenting are trying to break free from today.

There’s so much pressure to be in a relationship.

There’s this feeling that something is wrong with you if you can’t find someone who wants to commit to you. People who care for you will tell you that they “just want you to be happy” without any thought that maybe you could be really happy on your own. I know so many people (myself included) who have jumped into relationships because it felt like that was what they were supposed to be doing at the juncture in their life and not because they found a person who truly made their heart sing.

Interestingly, there isn’t much pressure to be in good relationship with one’s own self.

We conflate self-care with selfishness. We’re told to put others first at the expense of our own needs. A lot of the time we don’t even know what our own needs even are! And even on flipside of the equation, we are told to love ourselves unconditionally without being able to fully accept who and what we are.

*deep breath*

What if we could hit the reset button and have a start fresh? While it can be difficult to do that in a relationship with another person, it’s far less challenging to do it with ourselves because we don’t need to coordinate anything with anyone else. Today’s Libra New Moon provides the opportunity to do just that!

Set a new pace

Why is it that many of us feel like we need to change ourselves over night? Monday morning (/the first of the month/the New Year/etc.), seems to be this magic day where we will wake up this brand-new person, ready to tackle new habits and a new life. Our alarm will go off and instead of hitting snooze 10 times, we’ll emerge from the cocoon of our bed sheets a full and beautiful butterfly ready to flutter and fly.

The reality is that we are not digesting our body from the inside out and physically building a new existence like a pupa does inside a chrysalis – we are actually the same person we were Sunday night with our hopes and dreams for a smoother Monday morning as we are on that Monday morning when we get mad at ourselves for not being able to form a new habit and hit snooze 11 times (an extra time for good measure – I am definitely talking about myself here!).

What if we approached the changes we wanted to make in our life in a slow and deliberate way that was forgiving?

Setting the pace in a new relationship means not falling head over heels and taking things at a pace that allows time to make observations and reflect on what is observed. As a person who loves intensity in nearly any situation, this seems super challenging for me. But being able to take a step back and observe our own self can help us see why the things we want to do are hard for us to actually accomplish.

For example, after observing what I was feeling for many, many mornings over the course of a year, I realized that that my need to snooze was brought on by many factors like not being happy at work, feeling anxiety about my morning commute, feeling pressure from myself to get in early morning exercise, and being unable to establish or keep other morning routines. Oh, and not actually getting enough sleep. So instead of forcing myself into the person that I felt I wanted to be, I instead tried to take some of the pressure off myself one pressure at a time. I have a new job that I’m loving so far, and I’ve changed my schedule so I can go into work early and exercise in the evening.

I let go of the attachment I had to what my life should look like and have experimented to find what really works for me. It’s not the perfect life I imagined, but I’m realizing that those expectations were impossible to meet, and I’m doing the best that I can. It’s not perfect, and neither am I, but I’m definitely creating a world for myself where I can start to thrive.

Being in relationship with yourself does not mean you need to love everything about yourself.

My amazing friend Tiana Dodson turned me onto the fact that I don’t need to love all parts of my body, I just need to be in relationship with those parts. The body positivity movement, while its intentions are rooted in goodness, has told us to love our bodies no matter what. The truth is that many of us have bodies that can betray us, or have been betrayed, or feel betraying. There are just some parts of ourselves we truly cannot love unconditionally.

We have one body while we are on this planet and I would like to tell you that you do not need to love every single part of it, but you do need to learn how to accept it for what it is and learn how to be in relationship with it.

Think of all the relationships you have with other people. Do you love each of your coworkers unconditionally? I don’t! I don’t have to, either. But I know how to maintain the relationships I have with them so we can each accomplish the goals that we have to the best of our abilities. I think we need to have a similar relationship with our bodies.

What if, instead of feeling like we needed to change everything about ourselves that we don’t like, we were able to take a step back and address what we really need?

I have amblyopia in my right eye which means I have nothing but peripheral vision in that eye. Growing up with it I’ve learned to adapt my life in a way that feels completely natural for me. I am in relationship with it because I just know there are certain things that are difficult or impossible for me to do without being able to use both eyes effectively. I might try a new eye therapy if one seems to work for adults with this condition, but I’ve accepted that there isn’t much I can really do. The relationship with amblyopia is an easy one for me to maintain because it’s always been like this for me and there’s not much change that can happen.

However, I’m beginning a new chapter in my relationship with my eyesight. Because I effectively have only one good eye to do all the work of two, my left eye is getting tired faster as I age. I seriously thought I was slowly going blind, even after my eye doctor tried to assure me that everything was healthy and I was just getting older. It wasn’t until I was having dinner with another friend who pulled out a bad-ass pair of reading glasses and let me try them on that I realized that I actually wasn’t going blind, my eyes are just getting weaker. Sure, I can have 20/20 vision, but that doesn’t mean I can still see as perfectly as I was once able to. I cannot say that I love this part of myself. One of my identities is being a photographer, and one hallmark of a great photograph is having crisp, clear images, which is much more difficult if your vision is off.

I have two choices

I can live in denial that I’m getting older and my body is slowly starting to die (at least I’m not digesting myself from the inside out?). Or I can support my new needs by making the text on my phone and computers bigger and investing in multiple pairs of reading glasses that I can leave at home and work for those moments when I actually want to be able to see something clearly. But I do not need to love that my eyesight is deteriorating.

This weekend take some time to explore the relationship you want to have with yourself. How can you take things slow and steady? What are the parts of yourself where you would like to have a better relationship? What needs do you have that you aren’t meeting and how can you meet those needs?

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Virgo New Moon 2019 – Our Heart’s Desires

Today’s Virgo New Moon has me contemplating why it’s difficult to follow our hearts. I mean, I know why, just not whyyyyyyyyy.

I’ve had many conversations lately with people about the difficulty of following our own hearts. Society places a lot of expectations on us that we must live by: get a job, pay the bills, do something that seems “valuable” with our lives, etc. We aren’t expected to follow our hearts though. We’re told to “do what we love” which kinda comes close, but that piece of world advice still misses the mark because frequently the implied reasoning behind it is, “do what you love so it’s easier to be a cog in the wheel.” I know many artists, healers, and teachers who are doing what they love and are having a hard time making ends meet and face the judgements of others that they should get a “real” job. And thus, stop following their heart.

These expectations and judgments get passed down through our families. Our well-meaning parents might have sacrificed their heart’s desire to do the best that they felt they could do to raise us. For many of us, there is a certain way that life must look to be considered “right.” And the thought of deviating from this is foolish.

“Heartless” definitely isn’t a synonym of “foolish.”

This applies to all aspects of life. Relationships, where we live, the hobbies we have, the ways that we could potentially follow our hearts seems endless!

It’s important to follow our hearts. Doing such can help us live a fuller and healthier life because it means that we are doing something that brings in more enjoyment and excitement than it does stress. When we follow our hearts, we demonstrate to ourselves that we trust ourselves and our intuition gets stronger. And when we can trust ourselves, it becomes easier to trust other people. Or know not when to trust someone. Following our hearts can also help us live with fewer regrets because we might ask ourselves, “what if?” a little less.

Yes, it can feel foolish. And yes, it can be risky. And definitely yes, the logical side of our brains should be involved in making very important decisions because there the reality of life that we must report to. But there is something all of us can do today to listen to our hearts a little more and live a more fulfilling life if we can just release some of the expectations that we hold.

This is where this beautiful Virgo Moon comes in.

Her energy is all about starting new habits and practices and is a loving and nurturing way to learn how to follow our hearts.

Think of places in your life where you feel your heart nudge you and journal about while thinking of the following:

  1. What is this nudge telling you?
  2. What is this nudging trying to tell you, about you? What the reason that this nudge exists in the first place?
  3. What are all the ways that this nudge seems foolish to follow?
  4. For each reason it seems foolish, examine where this judgement comes from. Is it an expectation that’s been passed to us? Is it a high risk to take? Something else?
  5. Think of your nudge with a beginner’s mind. As best as you can, let go of the reasons the nudge seems foolish and write about how it would feel if you gave into your heart’s desire. Take a step back each time you feel judgement creep in.
  6. What are some things you could do to clear some room for your heart’s desire? A conversation with someone who’s opinion matters to you, taking a look at your finances, and reading about the experience of others who have done something similar might help take some of the “foolishness” out of our desire.
  7. If your heart’s desire is something that is truly out of the realm of possibility for now, what is something that you can do to help satisfy this desire until the timing is better? (PS – the timing will probably never be “right!”)
  8. And if your heart’s desire is possible right now, what are some steps that you can take to follow it? Then, go out and do those things!
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New Moon in Leo 2019 — Your undoing is you becoming

It seems that just about everyone is going through some sort of personal crisis right about now. Those of us who are in tune with the rhythms of the Universe seem to be having a slightly better time at it because we understand the ebbs and flows of the chaos that churns ethereal clouds of our world, but that doesn’t make anything we are going through any easier. In fact, it might make it a little more difficult because we know there’s a reason for all of this, and we know that it’s our duty to experience each rip and tear to our heart and soul to keep shedding, growing, and becoming who we are meant to be.

Enter the Leo New Moon. She will pounce on us tomorrow evening as a powerful New Moon that intends playfulness and courage. After the Cancer/Capricorn eclipse portal that was opened and closed with the first New Moon and the Full Moon of July, and the Lions Gate opening on July 26, we are in a tender moment of shedding what no longer serves us, preparing for the next step of our transformation. Basically, we all feel like a pulverized caterpillar trying to put itself back together into something it knows it’s supposed to be but hasn’t ever been. It’s disorienting and uncertain, but that instinct to become is there, and if we can just trust it, we’ll eventually emerge into a new sense of freedom.

However, becoming something “new” doesn’t mean we come in with a clean slate. We are bringing all of our trials, tribulations, and lessons we have learned. We also have custody of our inner children, which Leo is ready to be befriend and play with. The New Moon is a great time to explore what these parts of ourselves need from us to make the transition easier and to live fully as the kick-ass butterflies that we will be.

Take some time to meditate on your life when you were a toddler and preschooler, and when you were in elementary, middle, and high school. What are some key moments for each phase that you experienced? What were your emotions at the time? What did you think and feel about yourself, your family and friends, and the world around you? These questions can’t be answered for all ages, of course, but use what knowledge you have and do your best.

Finally, ask each of your inner children what they need. Can they tell you? If not, can you remember when you were them and feel out what you needed at that time? When you think you have these things, see which of these needs you can meet and see if there’s a way to figure out how to meet the needs of those that you feel you can’t right now.

It is also important to take some time to honor who you once were. This person helped you survive thus far in life, and through all the mistakes and successes, deserves to be recognized. The butterfly can’t bring its caterpillar self into their new life, it must be sacrificed and let go to move on.

Peridot and Neroli

From Crystal Vaults: Peridot is an extraordinary crystal for healing the emotional body and resolving matters of the heart. It cleanses and heals hurt feelings and “bruised egos,” lessening anger, jealousy, resentment and spite, while teaching one to understand that holding onto people, or the past, is counterproductive to one’s growth. It teaches one to examine the past for the gift of the experiences, admit mistakes and let go of guilt and blame, forgiving oneself, or others, in order to move forward.

Peridot stimulates psychological clarity and inspires a sense of happiness and contentedness in one’s life. It empowers one to detach the mind from outside influences and have confidence in one’s own abilities, looking inward for guidance and accessing the wisdom of the higher mind. It initiates independence and assertion without aggression, accepting the world as it is, then transforming it with clear intention to create the reality one wishes to have.

From Miracle Botanicals: Neroli itself is pure spirit, representing the purity in all things. It is always loving and peaceful. Neroli essential oil brings light into any day, but is especially useful whenever mistrust has overtaken reason, or during dark periods of deep depression.

Neroli essential oil has another purpose to bring self-recognition and relief. [Out] pain and sorrow is sometimes brought about because we have not seen how we might have affected our relations with the others in perception. Neroli allows the reflection that can throw light on the wounds that tie us to old patterns of relating. As truth is revealed, the self emerges into wholeness and all encompassing love, stirring the spirit in ways that can be both unexpected and liberating. Then, the spirit can really soar.

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New Moon in Cancer 2019 — Connecting and Releasing

The New Moon in Cancer happens just after Mars enters Leo. There will also be a total solar eclipse during this time which will only be visible in parts of South America. This is great energy for connecting with your heart and ensuring it connects with your home. If you find a disconnect, use that extra boost of Leo in Mars energy to find a creative solution.

Take some time to think about your home. Does it feel like a home? Are you connected to your loved ones? If you feel disconnected, how can you reconnect? Do you want to reconnect? Sit with any feelings that arise and know that these feelings are just information and not problems that need to fixed right away unless you feel genuine inspiration to do so.

Connect with water today in anyway that you can. Whether it’s soaking in a bath, going for a swim, drinking more than your fair share of water, or sitting by a river, being in or near water will help you connect to the Cancerian energy of this New Moon to explore the feelings that might be ready to surface. What feelings have you been burying, that you have decided to “deal with” at another time? Watch a movie, listen to music, or journal to bring these feelings to the surface so they can be acknowledged and felt in a safe place today. It’s okay to cry it out!