Via Combusta Scorpio New Moon October 26 Opens Into the Dark Half and Sets the Tone for Saturn in Scorpio 2012 - 2015

Photo: Willow

Scorpio New Moon conjunct Juno - October 26 at 2:56 p.m. Central Daylight Time

There's a bit o' spook in the air along with the smell of fallen leaves as we cross into the dark half of the year in the northern hemisphere. The Sun enters Scorpio. Cailleach takes the reins from Brigid. Persephone starts her sombre trek. The veils between the living and the ancestors, the light half and the dark half, become so thin as to be nearly non-existent.

Witchy origins rise to the surface at this time of year. We recognize each other quite readily now - on the bus, in the grocery store, passing on the sidewalk. A knowing glance. A subtle acknowledgement. The history laid bare. We know each other. We know. It's not so necessary to hide ourselves just now, camouflaged amongst the ghosts and goblins, creatures and spooks.

The Scorpio New Moon is a moon of underlying magic and mystery, crackling with alchemical possibility. Drink it in, and feel how powerful, how potent you are, distilled into this very moment on this very planet.

Photo: Willow

Feel the responsibility you hold for being so powerful. The weight that keeps you here, grounded, enduring. The unyielding limitations and stern restrictions you've come to respect and even love, keeping you on the straight and narrow. Keeping you from devastation, disaster, attack, exhaustion, injury. The borders and frameworks that contain you and your power, keeping you safe and keeping others safe from you. Holding you at your most concretely effective position because anything less would be less than you are.

At this Scorpio New Moon sextile Pluto in Capricorn, we step through a doorway - open for a limited time only and only to the wise among us - into the tone and themes of the Saturn transit through Scorpio when it will be in mutual reception to Pluto in Capricorn.

Every New Moon indicates something emerging: new emotional realities related to the sign in which it falls, as well as deadfall - dead and done emotional realities - to clear away during the Balsamic phase. Here, we step into a new layer of inheritance. Sacred gifts of the soul, of our ancestral and spiritual lineages, are bestowed upon us at this New Moon. We step more fully into their power and into the responsibility we hold for making good use of them from our strategic positions of influence on this planet.

Saturn, the planet related to strategic positioning, is at 21 degrees Libra, about to enter its retrograde shadow November 3, and will be exactly sextile Mars at 21 degrees Leo at the time of the New Moon. Mars in Leo (square Mercury-Venus in Scorpio) is at a potent distillation point, closing out its two-year cycle under the energy overlay of the lion. Explosively creative partnerships emerge out of this New Moon in Scorpio along with corresponding new levels of social and creative responsibility for bringing about the particular astrological Aquarian era future we wish to be part of.

This is the last Scorpio New Moon before Saturn ingresses the sign of sex, death, regenerative healing, hardcore soul drive, and metamorphosis October 5, 2012. Those who understand the seriousness of the times in which we're living and the level of responsibility it takes to truly get the job done get a head start here - almost a full year of extra time to put in our energetic prep work. With Saturn, it pays to be both prepared and unrushed.

Saturn in Scorpio will require:

Energetic responsibility. Absolute energetic responsibility.

Intricate, masterful restraint.

Decision-making based in perfectly-honed intuition. Heeding gut feelings and Scorpionic spidey sense, but waiting until we're absolutely sure of what they're telling us before acting.

A new level of care and caution with emotions, psyches and psychic space.

A much lower tolerance for baggage, unfinished business, emotional/psychological/sexual entanglements, and otherwise bullshitty behaviours.

A no-nonsense release of anything no longer vital to our long-term soul-level success. (Saturn would call those things "frivolous.")

A slower, more gradual timing for the merger of energy and resources, especially financial and sexual.

A deepened respect for our power and our influence on others, on the world, on the universe itself. A deepened respect for what flows through us, for what we're connected to, for ancestral context, and for how it works through us.

The understanding of our positions as change agents. The facilitators of structural metamorphosis.

Photo: Willow

As with the other 11 signs, under the astrological lens, everyone has Scorpio in one form or another. Because of its power, complexity, and extremes, Scorpio is an energy prone to misuses and abuses. It's the sign of "the occult," and there are many, many people being very, very irresponsible on this front.

Speaking of which, this Scorpio New Moon is potent for another reason: contrary to popular belief and all the December 21, 2012 hoopla, there's a good chance the date for the end of the Mayan calendar is actually October 28, 2011 - just as we unfold into the new energetic and emotional realities indicated by this Scorpio New Moon.

A bunch of fools is currently attempting to bring about the "end of the world" on this planet - at least for those of us considered expendable collateral damage for the ascended, the enlightened, the awakened, the raptured, and the planetary/inter-planetary elite. And yet another bunch of fools is vociferously glorying about this magical and wonderful culling that will supposedly bring about their new age, their saving grace, their shot in the big leagues, their ticket out of here.

Neptune is currently stationing direct at 28 Aquarius (November 9). Chiron Rx is conjunct at 0 degrees Pisces. The wound is a wound of faith, of naivete, of belief, of hopes, of glossing over, of pedestal placing and pedestal sitting, of damaging ethers, of pseudo-spiritual blinders and manipulation. Neptune and Chiron now straddle 29 Aquarius, the degree that tips us into the astrological Aquarian era. Make sure you know where you're placing your faith and which version of the Aquarian era future you're supporting with the choices you make in your life.

All these layers make keeping the Scorpionic bullshit detectors perfectly honed and perfectly attuned coming out of this New Moon that much more important. And they certainly add an element to the level of responsibility required as we navigate our lives during these particular times.

I wrote about the themes of this Scorpio New Moon previously in conjunction with the Libra New Moon. I'll re-post it here because I feel this is an important time frame. From September 23, 2011: Upcoming New Moons in Libra and Scorpio - More Spice Than Sugar For the Next Two Months

- Via Combusta New Moon in Scorpio October 26 Conjunct Juno -

The New Moon in Scorpio October 26 deepens the process. Things move from the social to the energetically alchemical, and a big part of the process moves out of our hands.

The New Moon (2:56 p.m. CDT) is in full-on Via Combusta territory at 3 degrees Scorpio, which will be tightly sextile Pluto in Capricorn. The New Moon is also conjunct soul mate asteroid Juno, newly in Scorpio at zero degrees. Venus and Mercury will be closely conjunct each other at 21 and 20 degrees Scorpio respectively. This is certainly a New Moon with an edge.

Sextile Pluto in Capricorn, it is an energetic precursor to the upcoming period involving the Saturn in Scorpio - Pluto in Capricorn mutual reception (October 6, 2012 to September 18, 2015) and brings us into the tone of that time period - deep, soulful, serious, pragmatic, no fucking around.

This Juno-vibing Scorpio New Moon opens into the knowledge that finding a "soul mate" is only the beginning of the work. We're in some thorny, collectively karmic relational territory these days, and there are plenty of knots to be worked out ahead of your standard 'utter soul union bliss.' Aspects of unbalanced power dynamics are perpetuated through our interactions just by virtue of us being on the planet at this time, and we're challenged to consciously work them free together.

The relationships that deepen coming out of this Scorpio New Moon conjunct Juno have to be right, no doubt about it. We still have some time under Saturn exalted in Libra to get the balance right, but under Saturn in Scorpio, our energy will be restricted; our resources will be limited. Heading into Saturn in Scorpio, we cannot afford to take losses (including emotional/energetic/psychic losses) or to make bad judgement calls as far as the integrity and abilities of the people with whom we enter partnership.

It will not be easy to get ourselves out of the wrong partnerships, and it will not be easy to recover from the wrong mergers of resources and energy (particularly sexual energy) from here on out...

The extrication processes during Saturn in Scorpio are more likely to be difficult: turbulent, protracted, nasty, even so enervating and devastating as to be deadly. I've said this before, and I'll say it again: Make firm decisions about the people you have in your life now, and don't compromise your standards. Being a highly popular social butterfly spreading yourself over multitudes of acquaintances isn't going to mean much during Saturn in Scorpio. Only the relationships that truly pay dividends, soul-deep, are going to be worth the energy. Keep only the people you're absolutely sure about, and even then, work to create proper boundaries for all members of your social circle - including yourself. Good fences make good neighbours, especially under Saturn in Scorpio.

A major relational difficulty here is that with Pluto transiting Capricorn, the way things have been set up is corrupt. It no longer works. It never really did. The hierarchies are illegitimate. There is a detrimental power imbalance between men and women and the masculine and feminine energetic interplay. On a very many fronts, things are just plain wrong, and we have to change the course. All this must be consciously and mutually dealt with as mergers - business, love or otherwise - come about slowly and carefully, with full respect for the intricacies involved and the deep pitfalls to avoid. Trying to bring these combinations together fully before the power dynamics are reworked and the timing (Saturn) is right will only create more hurt and distortion.

In love, this involves creating right sexual relationships (Scorpio) with mutually held consciousness of the prior and current misuses and violent abuses of sexual energy. This especially involves abuses of women and the domination and control of feminine sexual power and knowledge. It also includes the damage done by the "too much, too fast, too often" mainstream sexual culture of the day. These misuses and abuses have become so energetically ingrained, hidden and accepted through millenia of cultural reinforcement, that it takes pristine focus and awareness within a sexual partnership not to repeat the dynamics in some form or another.

People are being kept from their full sexual power by false, mainstream-media constructed versions of sex, sexuality, beauty and attraction. But Scorpio is a sign that has the ability to make sex and the energetic interplay between people sacred and purposeful again. Issues start coming to the forefront out of this New Moon that will be on our plates during Saturn in Scorpio as far as the hidden energy exchanges between the sexes (and between those of the same sex).

The currencies of sexual, emotional and psychic energy as well as masterful Scorpionic healing abilities require conscious re-valuing and re-working, one interchange at a time.

We'll be working diligently on these intimate and highly complex issues throughout Saturn's transit of Scorpio into September of 2015.

In light of the complexities ahead, the decisions we make now must come straight from our souls, right from our core truth with no fibbing around the edges. There is very little margin for error now and there is a decreasing amount the closer we get to Saturn's ingress of Scorpio.

Allow the Scorpio New Moon October 26 to take you deeply into your intuitional guidance, the still place inside that already knows how the whole map has been laid out.

And don't be afraid. It all comes out OK, even if it doesn't.