Thirteenth Degree Scorpio New Moon and Mercury Squares Off With Some Potent Stationing Neptune-Chiron Illusions

The Scorpio Sun and Moon come together at 13 degrees late on Friday, November 5 (11:52 p.m. CT), marking the first in the series of six New Moons at 13 degrees of the signs.

Venus will be about two-thirds done its retrograde in Scorpio, which ends November 18 on the same day Jupiter turns direct in Pisces, and this New Moon happens on the exact degree where Venus turned retrograde. We're working to emerge from some claustrophobic old attractions and layers, past-related attachments and etheric grasping, and emotional reactions and patterns in relationship, especially ways in which all that has to do with our self-worth. We're digging into some deep issues here on multiple fronts and purging a lot from our systems, traversing some very bumpy (yet all-too-familiar) terrain, and boy, it's exhausting.

But as the Sun and Moon fuze in Scorpio in a stellium with Venus, Vesta and Mercury, we have a golden opportunity to hold to what's true, letting old stuff burn away and drop to the ground, breaking its hold over us and moving intuitively onto new emotional ground.

This has to do with family patterns and the relationship constructs and dynamics patterned through our familial lines, as well as unfinished love/relationship business along spiritual lineages as part of the ongoing Pisces-to-Aquarius collective purging and reformulating. Multi-layered with a lot trying to grasp and attach and suck us back in. It will take a strong conscious awareness of interpersonal dynamics and emotional realities to make it fully through this New Moon portal. We've been working on this a long time, and here it can be shed.

At the same time, we're all about fried from so much Scorpio and Pluto emphasis over the past month (Pluto, Ceres and the North Node are still conjunct in early Capricorn), so we have to be very gentle with ourselves and with others. It won't take much to push to emotional catatonic overload now, so we need to close out this lunar cycle and begin the new one slowly, with our emotional readiness and the readiness of those around us as guides. A little goes a long way here.

This New Moon occurs as Chiron and Neptune are both stopped in the zodiac, stationing direct at the same time in a tight late-Aquarius conjunction (Chiron November 5, Neptune November 7). Stations are times when the energy of the planet/body is considered especially potent and resonant, permeating the astro atmospheric conditions.

Communication and intelligence planet Mercury in late Scorpio plays a strong role in this New Moon chart, locked into an exact square with stationing Neptune and Chiron in Aquarius. Mercury is also trine Jupiter and Uranus, still retrograde, in late Pisces.

This makes the Mercury-Neptune/Chiron square a huge highlight and energetic theme of this New Moon chart and the next lunar cycle. We're about to get the initial layers of this show on the road with Neptune, Chiron, Venus and Jupiter stationing direct this month and Uranus following suit December 5 on the day of our next thirteenth degree New Moon in Sagittarius. Holding the unwavering Scorpionic eye on the proceedings is just what we need to get started in the right direction now.

As I've written about previously, the personal planets and a couple asteroids have already transited (Pallas Athene and Mars) or are currently transiting (Venus, the Sun, Moon, Vesta and Mercury) Scorpio, triggering in wave after wave this square to Neptune-Chiron in Aquarius and trine to Jupiter Rx and Uranus Rx in Pisces.

The Scorpionic penetration of wounding Neptunian illusions and delusions about the future absolutely has to occur if we are to get to any real state of equality and freedom on this planet anytime in the near future.

Future-oriented utopian ideals and 2012 'consciousness ascension' fervour have been pumped so full of Neptunian ether at this point that they're bursting at the seams, having little to do with solving the actual problems and remedying the actual injustices on this planet from the ground up. Feet have been lifted so far off the ground and people have been pulled so far out of their grounded, intuitive understanding and earthy logic, that we've been left with a dangerously maleable group, tossed this way and that depending which way the information fads and the media, both mainstream and "alternative," blow them.

Tell me again why the over-glorification of the "upper chakras"? All too purposeful, I think...

Multiple overlays attempt to buy our attention, our allegiance, our truth, our minds, our words. Much of the "alternative" has been swallowed up, infiltrated, now little more than a subsidiary arm, never getting to the root.

The consuming, obsessional quality of information and of information-seeking in this over-saturated multi-media age comes to the forefront under this aspect. The looping, addictive patterns from one information source to another. Internet, television, radio, internet, television, radio. Never a moment free from the blaring frequencies that act so detrimentally on our personal frequencies. More and more information with less and less meaning, creating a group of people who don't know what to believe until they are told what to believe, attempting to fill up on conflicting informational bits and pieces and coming away hungry, unsatisfied, enervated, ever-further from the wisdom of their own souls. Seeking something of substance, something that hits the mark and gives some real perspective on the matters at hand.

There is a strong impetus here to purify our information channels, eliminating those that do not deliver the goods. The cleansing and protection of our mental and psychic environments.

Here, the Scorpionic crap-cutting and ability to see in the dark become crucial, with our own penetrating personal insights (Mercury in Scorpio), merged with others' of just the right tenor, key in extricating us and our real vision for the Aquarian future from those who seek to hijack them.

Mercury in Scorpio has a direct line from our ears and our eyes right to our guts. Body intuition connected to our receptive minds. Mercury in Scorpio can listen to the energy of words, determine the underlying agenda and extricate itself from the manipulated scene before the speech's opening paragraph is even complete. It can follow reaction - both personal and collective - to oratory, to official lines and official announcements, and understand the true motive of what is being floated in the public. It can watch the movement and sway of the crowd and determine when it is being herded by Uranian/Neptunian dangling carrots. This is where our minds are now, what we can tap into as we butt up against the Neptune-Chiron in Aquarius futuristic siren songs attempting to suck us into more of the same.

But first, the Scorpio energy has to be honed in the individual to the point where it is trustworthy above all else. We have to be able to trust that when we extricate ourselves from the din of dis/information and from the movements and shifts of the group mind, we'll be left with what's real and true, even if that means standing alone.

And all this while the collective conscious and unconscious is being purposefully saturated with every fearful End Time possibility. Scorpio and fear go hand-in-hand. Facing our fears, accepting and disarming them and neutralizing the power they have over us as best we can are all part of the liberation and spiritual elevation of the sign.

Nowhere is this more apparent, with Venus retrograde, than in our relationships. All the old fears - of being alone, desolate, unvaluable, unworthy, unlovable, rejected, of being deprived and starved of love, money, resources - are coming to the surface, testing their power over us. There's a fear telling us we can't let go of our connection to the subpar in relationship and elsewhere in case that's all there is for us.

The old illusory traps are also out in full force. We just think we've gotten past one, and another pops up like a black hole on the ground in a Looney Tunes cartoon.

This deep into the Piscean era, Neptune has certainly got our number as far as long-held hopes and dreams in and for relationships. We've taken the bait countless times in the past and swallowed nasty-ass dealbreaker realities hook, line and sinker, leaving us in huge messes that we had to dig ourselves out of.

And here, the Mercury-Neptune/Chiron square is prevalent, too, preceding the square to Neptune and Chiron by post-retrograde Venus itself next January.

New lovers speak the same phrases the old ones did, whispering just what Neptune thinks we'd like to hear. But this time, the words are surprisingly hollow, easily punctured.

Soul mate asteroid Juno is at 13 degrees Virgo at the time of this New Moon, exactly sextile the Sun-Moon conjunction. Add some no-nonsense Virgoan wheat-from-chaff standards and grounded analysis into the mix, and we're in good shape, very good shape. Promises that seemed so plausible before in our Neptunian loved-up states now seem laughable. Did we really fall for this previously? Have so many before us really fallen for this?

The clarifying messages should be coming in loud and clear. And here's the hot tip with Juno in Virgo sextile Sun-Moon in Scorpio and Mercury squaring Neptune-Chiron. The truth is really very simple, very basic. Reality is grounded and healing, not something from which to get intoxicated. Love is, too. So if that's what people are looking for - yet another temporary fix, yet another informational or verbal or sexual spike to the vein to calm their fevered and frenzied states - they'll miss it. The voice is quiet, responsible, firm...and effective. There are no bells and whistles. No phony Neptunian blasts elevating beyond the situation on this planet or the circumstances of human life...only to crash to the ground later.

Saturn in Libra has shown us the value of what's solid, real and responsible over the dream and the rosey potential. Show us the money and walk your talk or move along down the road. Wishful thinking has never been so unsexy. The old hopes and dreams seem somehow stale and outdated now, naive, and so much less valuable than love that is available and right in front of us.

This time, when the sweet nothings hit our ears and our stomachs lurch a little, we can follow our guts rather than smoothing things over and talking ourselves out of what we are really feeling, what we really know.

The final snips to what is illusory and inevitably disappointing and heartbreaking in relationship and elsewhere are just about ready. All those who have come before, who have pined and wept over their sweet and wonderful dreams unceremoniously crushed, are about ready now, too.

Mercury enters Sagittarius November 8 (whew!), joining Mars and Pallas and leaving Venus, the Sun and Vesta transiting our old pal Scorpio. (Except that Venus dips back into Libra November 7 for the last stretch of it's retrograde, re-entering Scorpio direct November 29.)

Venus goes direct November 18, the same day Jupiter goes direct in late Pisces. This is also a reliever, and we can start looking forward to Venus entering Sagittarius January 7 and Jupiter re-entering Aries January 22. That's a fiery blast forward that should be very welcome.