Shedding Skins at the Alpha Snake New Moon

Photo: Willow

The New Moon on November 13 is a total solar eclipse at 21 degrees Scorpio, and it packs a punch.

Eclipses can be very dramatic (and sometimes traumatic). They're super-charged New and Full Moons that can kick up major events - both natural and occult-planned. Eclipses can be seen as unstable, backdrop change indicators. With a New Moon solar eclipse like this one, one very potent layer of things is ending, burning itself out, and another is beginning.

This New Moon could potentially bring some drama, as it conjuncts both the unfortunate fixed star Alpha Serpentis (Unukalhai) and the Scorpio North Node. Spicy.

Alpha Serpentis is the Alpha Snake. The Head Reptilian Honcho. In sidereal astrology, this fixed star has been associated with suicide, insanity, accidents, love problems, loss, and earthquakes. All the fun stuff. Snakes have a complex and powerful symbolism. They're associated with regeneration and healing and also with poisons/medicines that can heal or kill. Homeopathy. Coming from another layer of the symbolism, they're associated with all things shifty, shady, and darkly cunning.

Snakes are naturally associated with the sign of Scorpio, which makes this New Moon that much more powerful. Doubling up on the snakey Scorpy. We have to be careful here.

Scorpio is precious medicine, but it can kill you if you aren't careful.

From a previous post:

"Scorpio is venomous - you'd better believe it. But it also has the poison that heals those last resort cases, and at this point on Planet Earth, we're all pretty much enmeshed in one of those."

With the sign of Scorpio, something has to die so that something else can live. Extreme, tragic, dramatic. Also just real life on Planet Earth.

We're shedding multiple skins here at this New Moon eclipse - as many as we can skim off - in an attempt to proactively drop deadweight that could slow us down or trip us up as Saturn moves further into Scorpio. 

Saturn enters its retrograde shadow at 4 degrees Scorpio on November 14 in an awkward and uncomfortable 150-degree quincunx aspect to Uranus in Aries. Uranus in Aries has nothing but our future direction in mind. Saturn in Scorpio lets us know in no uncertain terms that we have much to address and resolve before we move on. We've gone in the wrong directions entirely in the past, unaware of some crucial layer of context, and we can't afford that now. We have to be directed from the root, from the core, from the soul with no false illusions about the scenarios we find ourselves in on this planet.

Things start to get more dense and complicated once Saturn enters the retrograde shadow, and this Scorpio New Moon is one last chance to drop what we need to drop and reconfigure where we need to reconfigure. The weight of collective karmic charge will be arduous enough over the next three years without dragging along with us layers of the situation we could easily have sloughed off.

Expect and capitalize on opportunities for resolution and completion.

The deadweight we're wriggling out of here could involve situations and relationships that are no longer earning their keep (maybe they never were). It could involve enervating emotional and psychological patterns we're straight-up sick of. It could involve versions of ourselves that have become brittle, lifeless, cardboard cut-outs. Or it could involve unrealized, obsessed-upon desires that have kept us tied up, constricted, hamstrung.

We're letting go of energy drains and recommiting in more vital directions.

With so much Scorpio in the zodiac (Sun, Moon, North Node, Saturn, and soon-to-be Mercury Rx), this New Moon is a full, emotional-body cleansing, which could be exhausting depending how much there is to purge. Full Moons are generally high energy points, while New Moons are low energy points. Give yourself and others lots of down time for the reconstitution back into full physical form following this one.

Traditionally, eclipses were in effect only in the areas where they were visible. Only those areas could expect the dramatic (and sometimes traumatic) events and super-charged backdrop changes. This makes sense. Before telephones, internet, or mass media, if you couldn't see an eclipse with your own two eyes, you wouldn't know it was happening. The current rules would have a little more grey area, in my opinion. With mass media, we can be aware that an eclipse is occurring somewhere else in the world, and with internet, we can even "see" it online.

This eclipse will be visible in parts of Australia, New Caledonia, New Zealand, South America, and Antarctica.

The following 28 days should be particularly dramatic and renewal-oriented for those with strong Scorpio in the natal chart.

As a New Moon involves the slow emergence out of a dark period into a new cycle, related events are not always immediately apparent. Scorpio is one of the signs that is particularly process-oriented, so the process gets a big kick start here, but the full results may only be apparent later.

Whatever it is in a state of alchemical morph (related to the house in your natal chart where the eclipse falls), things start to move coming out of this New Moon.

So we're standing on the Dark of the Moon side of this Alpha Snake portal from 3:22 p.m. CST today until 4:08 p.m. on November 13, stripping down to our most vital essentials. But we're also determining what makes it through with us to the other side.

Ensuring we're leaving detrimental influences on the other side of this portal is going to take some steel-willed concentration and focus. Mercury Rx is backing into its second square to Neptune in Pisces, clouding our vision, and some fairly unpleasant things could be slipped by us if we're not vigilant.

We all, ultimately, have to be responsible for what we bring through this New Moon portal. For what we mix into our own Scorpionic alchemical soup. There are certain dynamics, people, and situations we should just not be playing with now.

From a previous post:

"Underlying loyalties shake out under this Moon, and we start to get a clearer picture of where people stand as we head deeper into Saturn in Scorpio. Incompatibilities glossed over during Saturn in Libra are pushed to the surface, like it or not. Crossed motivations send up sparks. Lips will curl, unconsciously, showing our fangs if we come too near those with whom we lack inherent common ground. The ties that bound friendly allies during Saturn in Libra snap like dry, autumn twigs under Saturn in Scorpio. Soul compatibility is something altogether different.

Soul-deep incompatibilities go from cracks, to divisions, to chasms. There can be no doubt where we stand on the other side of this New Moon portal."

The Moon will be very active within the Dark of the Moon/Balsamic phase heading into Tuesday's New Moon. From Libra, it will square Pluto, trine Jupiter, and Juno, conjunct Venus, and sextile Mars. From Scorpio, it will trine Neptune, Chiron, and Ceres, conjunct Saturn, quincunx Uranus, and sextile Pluto. This brings a lot of elements into the mix.

With the conjunctions to Venus and Saturn, determining the right alchemy for relationships - both personal and professional - as well as correct boundaries are a big part of the process.

Understand your own bottom line. Watch for slippery-tongued plays on your compassion, your pity, your guilt, your sense of the spiritual, and your idea of what a "good person" should be and do. Filter the Neptunian-heightened impressions coming to you now in both waking and dreaming worlds. These are all ways we can be fooled now.

The combination of strong Scorpio with a Mercury-Neptune square makes things ripe for "you're not who I thought you were" experiences where we realize our interplay with another person is not what we were hoping. Scorpio loves laying waste to an illusion.

The focus now is on resolution, completion, finishing, letting it burn out, dropping it, spinning it off, getting lighter.

If in doubt, let it go, and this includes ties to people. Close out old, unsatisfying dynamics without fear: anything that is meant to go on from here will regenerate into something better, clearer, stronger, and more vital later on.

Set the tone how you would like it, no compromises, and don't let anything slip through your own New Moon portal for which you are not willing to be personally responsible.