On Tuesday, December 12th, we will have a new moon in Sagittarius 21° (20°40′), the second of five consecutive new moons in the 21° of the sign. It will be exact at 3:32 pm in California, 17:32 hours in Mexico City. This is a powerful lunation seed albeit less intense than what we had a month ago. I am writing an article about the astrology of 2024, which I see as a year of speeding down the runway before taking off in 2025. Using that analogy, 2023 was the year of taxiing about the airport, encountering bad weather, having to de-ice the wings, and so on. A year of much chaos trying to get to the start of the runway!
First of all, every new moon stresses the sign in which it occurs. The Sun and Moon conjunction places the archetypes of the sign in the lunation seed with unparalleled strength. The new moon will continue to find Mars forming a conjunction (wide, 7° apart) with Sun and Moon from Sagittarius 13°21′. We described Sagittarius as the builder of civilizations, and indeed we are co-creating a new civilization which is the product of our collective mind operating at a higher and subtler level of consciousness. What began as energy generated by Libra from the formation of new relationships, and later became concentrated into power by Scorpio as the product of such relationships (sex, commerce, finance, politics, …), must be distributed by Sagittarius to the largest collectivity possible in the form of a new civilization. Thus, we find a great amount of potentiality available for the entire lunation.
Sabian Symbol
There are influences other than the Sun–Moon–Mars conjunction as we will see shortly but it all starts with the Sabian symbol for Sagittarius 21°, which has the image: “A child and a dog wearing borrowed eyeglasses”, further explained as the use of imagination and make-believe in anticipating higher stages of development. The degree’s keynote is: Learning Through Imitation.
This peculiar symbol may be viewed at two levels. The path to change who we are begins by imagining that our transformation has happened. The child wearing eye glasses may pretend that he is an older and wiser person, much like some tribesmen in colonial times took to wear glass-less spectacles, or western hats, to imitate the cultures they saw as more advanced (big mistake, mind you). The dog adds another dimension, for it is a fact that our process of growth to a higher level of consciousness is accelerated by immersing ourselves in the ritualistic life of those already there, even if lacking full comprehension of its meaning.
This is consistent with the message we have been getting: a new level of consciousness is coming from the galactic center and being distributed to humankind by the sun.1 Regardless of our current level, as I have said before, each and every one of us is being “bombarded” by this subtler energy with which we are co-creating a new civilization. This month is for wearing the eyeglasses and engaging in creative visualization of the world we are co-creating with Nature.
Purification with Neptune
Neptune began to move direct on Dec 6th and, much like the ebbing tides uncover and even “return” that which the ocean had taken, it often shows what was kept “under water” the last five months, while moving retrograde. What is now being exposed may not even resemble what it was before being dissolved by the potent acid of Neptune. The transition from retrograde motion to direct happened in the same Pisces 25° degree shown in the new-moon chart (24°54′), a degree with a most intriguing symbol: “A religious organization succeeds in overcoming the corrupting influence of perverted practices and materialized ideals”, expanded as the power of the Soul to intervene in the personal life and to induce necessary catharses. Its keyword is: Purification.
To understand the symbol we must realize that each of us is a Church with our Soul as its god. Over time, we forget our Soul and instead live under dogmatic rules, habits and morals which are by then devoid of meaning and perverted by the demands of the senses and the emotional nature, as well as by the ego with its rationalizing intellect. A purging or catharsis is needed to restore not only freshness and spontaneity but also the contact between the Soul and the individual’s dharma.
Squares of Transmutation
As you can see in the chart, the new moon and Mars form squares with Neptune, aspects that inject tremendous energy capable of building a new civilization by having faith in the new consciousness we receive when we forget the demands of the ego and its senses, and look at the world with fresh eyes, wearing the eyeglasses that will let us see in our mind’s eye the world we are co-creating, even though we may not yet fully understand the process. Any square with Neptune will include a degree of confusion and perhaps misinformation or disinformation, but it is also a source of compassion for concrete endeavors.
There is hardly a more Water combination than Neptune in Pisces, and fewer combinations are more archetypal Fire than Sun and Mars in Sagittarius. Those two elements only co-exist in a fragile equilibrium, for too much water will quench the fire and too much fire will evaporate the water, but when properly combined a blacksmith can temper steel and give it unequaled strength, a process of chemical transmutation. We will have plenty of energy to lighten our beings, for even Saturn, the lord of structures and rigidity, is in the dissolving sign of Pisces.
Mars Journey Begins
In the last write-up, we equated the two-year relationship cycle between Sun and Mars to mythology’s hero’s journey, which began with the exact conjunction at Scorpio 26° on November 17th, the Mars equivalent of a “new moon”. After a conjunction with Sun, all planets remain “hidden” in its brilliance, within what could be called a “visual conjunction”, until they reach at least 13° of elongation—angular distance to the sun—and appear in the skies before sunrise. Mars will be at that distance from Sun on January 1st, 2024 from Sagittarius 27°, where we find Sagittarius A*! Symbolically speaking, Mars already began the journey but won’t really “leave town” until the upcoming New Year, when it will point us in the direction of the black hole at the galactic center.
Thus, the hero’s journey effectively begins in Sagittarius and Mars is the crusader in that sign, who fights for a big collective cause, the bigger the better, at the expense of the individual. In Spain’s horoscope, Mars is in Sagittarius as well as Sun and the Ascendant, so the infamous Spanish Inquisition shouldn’t be that surprising. Overall, 2024 will be the year of action and achievement in the hero’s journey, which will climax with the opposition a year later, on January 9th, 2025.
Venus in Scorpio
Elsewhere in the chart, we notice Venus at Scorpio 9°42′. As the planet of attraction, in Scorpio it gravitates toward what’s behind and under the forms we see. Venus in Scorpio symbolizes a strong attraction to the mysterious, unconventional and risky. It propels us to go as deep as possible in all manner of relationships but especially personal and intimate ones. It is a Venus that is not afraid of, and in fact has a need to explore, the dark side of relationships, being drawn to their Shadow.
The opposition between Venus and Jupiter (Taurus 6°09′) will intensify and bring awareness to the Venus in Scorpio archetype within our relationships. They may at times look dark and ominous but that is the transformative aspect of Scorpio that will often reveal a gold nugget lurking among the darkness.
Other Notable Influences
At Capricorn 8°29′, Mercury is stationary and about to begin three weeks of retrograde motion. It is located at the vertex of a Mystic Triangle with the Venus–Jupiter opposition, forming a trine with retrograde Jupiter and a sextile with Venus. The triangle enables mental comprehension of the relationship issues just discussed. Interestingly enough, both Jupiter and Mercury will change to direct motion essentially on New Years Day. After that, Uranus will be the sole planet moving retrograde until late January, when all planets will be in direct motion.
Saturn advanced to Pisces 2° (1°47′) and continues to dissolve structures that are no longer valid for what we are trying to achieve, going as far as redefining what “structures” mean. Remember that Saturn represents the energy that forms the ego complex, as defined by C.G. Jung, which is the structure of our conscious mind. Saturn in Pisces will work to loosen it such that our mind becomes flexible and allows easy entry to the new consciousness.
Shortly after the new moon, Pluto will move into the final degree of Capricorn, the so-called anaretic degree of fate in all signs, while finally leaving the square it has been forming with the Nodal axis all year long. After having entered Aquarius for a few weeks earlier in the year, it returned to Capricorn, the sign of governments and large institutions, to tie loose ends and finish what it set out to do back in 2008. It will reenter Aquarius, this time hand-in-hand with Sun, on January 20th so time’s a wasting. Yes, it will come back for ten more weeks in September of 2024, but that’s just for the final touches, like the US elections.
Wrapping Up…
As I mentioned earlier, this is the second of the last five lunation seeds of the year occurring in the 21st degree of a sign, from Scorpio to Pisces. If you have planets or angles (Ascendant, Descendant, Midheaven or I.C.) in the 18°–24° range of any sign, you may experience significant events during one or more of these new moons. The point is that all of us are being touched by what is happening.
We are at the threshold of numerous changes. Mars, our hero, will truly start its two-year-plus journey when the calendar moves to 2024, which is when Mercury and Jupiter will end their retrograde motion. Later in the month, Sun and Pluto will both enter Aquarius on January 20th, less than twelve hours apart. For Pluto, this will be the second time and, with the exception of a few weeks towards the end of the year, will remain in that sign until March 2043, when it will move on to Pisces. These are massive changes for all of humanity.
The world will continue to experience chaos and we are in danger of becoming schizophrenic. As Pam Gregory said, frequency is everything. It is important to tune to higher frequencies whenever possible. Be as informed as you want but don’t get hooked in the lower frequencies of what is being destroyed to give way to the new civilization.
Join hands, figuratively and literally, and welcome the new world based on universal love and compassion, which is being built by all of us. We are the pillars of the new civilization, the many who are becoming aware of the massive purification and transmutation of humanity.
Remember to declare an intention for the month prior to the new moon, preferrably the night before.
Always Love. 🌹🙏💖
- The clairvoyant Nancy Rebecca of Intuitive Minds talks about the “blue-star beings” who have also said that the higher consciousness is coming straight from the Great Attractor, a region of intergalactic space with extreme gravity, currently at Sagittarius 14°, around which revolve the galaxies of the Laniakea Supercluster, including the Milky Way and about 100,000 others. ↩︎
Leave a Reply